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Sprinklers Flood 18 Rooms In UNT Dorm, Officials Say

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DENTON (CBSDFW.COM) — University of North Texas students were told sprinklers were to blame for flooding nearly 20 first-floor rooms in a campus dorm.

The sprinklers reportedly went off around 10:30 p.m. Saturday, flooding 18 double rooms in the brand new Rawlins Hall. A massive clean up effort — including fans, mops and shop vacs — was still running Sunday afternoon.

The water in most rooms may have been only an inch or two deep, but students had left their books, computers and other items laying on the floor.

Freshman Eunic Salinas said she had to move all of her stuff to another dorm room.

When she returned to her room Saturday night, she found her laptop and all of her notebooks underwater. She said her immediate concern was her homework.

"My books and stuff, it had all the ink completely ruined," she said. "They told us the Dean of Students is going to notify the professors, so if we had papers due that were damaged, we are going to get an extension or something."

A university spokesperson told CBS 11 all of the students' property damaged by the water will be replaced by the school. The university is also trying to figure out why the sprinklers went off in the first place, as there were no signs of a fire.

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