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Jordan Thomas, a senior at UNC, was on his way to his first mid -term when he was told <br />classes and the campus was shut down early. His girlfriend works for the Federal <br />Emergency Management Agency and is deployed in T exas. When he told her about the <br />water shortage, she told him to drop everything and find water. <br />“It's really strange," he said. "I've been here for four years and this is the first time <br />anything like this has happened. Even down on the coast, nothing like this happened. If <br />there was a water main break, it was usually local and you'd be able to get to the store <br />relatively easily. <br />“If it goes on for more than three, four or maybe five days, I'll start to get worried, but <br />right now I'm not too concerned,” Thomas added. “I trust the system will work." <br />Matt Peretin, a Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools employee, was shopping for <br />beverages at Walmart and said he learned about the water shortage when students <br />were dismissed early. <br />"They were worried about having enough water, engineering-wise, just making sure <br />there's enough water for the sprinkler system," he said. "I'm not worried. The <br />technicians know what they’re doing. The biggest problem is they're going to test and <br />retest to make sure it's safe before they send it out. That's going to take more time than <br />the work.” <br />As Peretin observed, fire safety was a triggering motive for UNC’s closure. <br />Officials there weren’t sure there’d be enough water in the OWASA system if a major <br />fire broke out. Additionally, the shortage meant there wasn’t necessarily enough water <br />available for campus facilities to be “fully operable,” said Joanne Peters, the university’s <br />communications director.