It’s true what they say about weather in the midwest; you never really know what you’re going to get. In the span of two weeks, Bloomington has been hit with a polar vortex, then a sudden rise in temperature, followed by a tornado warning and flash flooding. IU senior Emily Hannon, lives in the basement of an off-campus house. The freezing cold temperatures made for her dishwasher pipes to burst and then start leaking. Her room was already flooded, but that wasn’t even the worst of it. Hannon came back from class on Thursday February 7th to her entire basement flooded with more water than before.

IU senior Arjun Singh, came home to the same thing on the day of the storm. His roommate’s room and his own room were completely flooded with at least an inch of water. Singh says the flooding rescue team came in promptly with specialized equipment like industrialized vacuums. “When they came, they said it was their 6th or 7th job within the past hour.”

Other students aren’t so pleased with the cleanup process and how their landlords are handling the situation. IU junior Carson Blackwell, recently had her bedroom carpets replaced due to mold. Blackwell’s landlord says they will not be changing her carpets again and will only replace the ones in the other basement bedrooms, despite the fact that her carpet is still wet from Thursday’s floods.

Due to the recent series of freeze-thaw cycles, the City of Bloomington’s Department of Public Works is expanding its efforts to repair streets damaged by the storms and floods. Last week, the street division crews patched close to 650 potholes but because the flooding waters froze over, new potholes appeared. Public Works is teaming up with Crider & Crider Inc. to help fill the potholes. Their equipment and crew costs about $1,520 a day. The City believes this will take around 5 days to fully repair.