Burst Pipe Causes Flooding in Rayburn
Architect of Capitol cleaning up two floors of House office building
The great #RayburnFlood of 2016! pic.twitter.com/SSSaGU71Er
— Chelsea Patterson (@Chelspat) June 21, 2016
A burst pipe in the Rayburn House Office Building flooded two floors Tuesday and caused elevator outages in the southwest portion of the building.
Staffers promptly took to Twitter to post photos and short videos showing water in hallways and streaming waterfalls coming from the ceiling.
A spokeswoman for the Architect of the Capitol said the pipe burst occurred above the fourth floor of the building and that crews have begun the cleanup process. Members offices do not appear to be affected.
Of course, Twitter had its fun with the ordeal.
Rayburn is flooding! #RayburnFlood #floodof2016 pic.twitter.com/asH8j6EDX6
— Garrett Hawkins (@GarrettDHawkins) June 21, 2016
The #RayburnFlood and #floodof2016 hashtags sprang up as people waited to find out what was going on. And one mysterious fellow snapped up the @rayburnflood Twitter account with a biography that simply read “don’t go chasin’ waterfalls,” an homage to the popular 1994 hit single from R&B group TLC.
Congressional staff and Capitol Hill visitors have been advised to avoid the area.
Alex Gangitano contributed to this report.
Contact Rahman at remarahman@cqrollcall.com or follow her on Twitter at @remawriter
