LAGUNA NIGUEL : Federal Building Soaked on Inside

While rain pounded Orange County on Wednesday, a federal agency was dealing with a flood of its own as water from a broken bathroom pipe drenched several floors of the Chet Holifield Federal Building, known as the Ziggurat.

Although vital records for several government agencies, including the Internal Revenue Service and the National Archives, escaped harm, water damage on the top two floors forced the Immigration and Naturalization Service to operate with a skeleton crew.

About 30 to 40 employees were sent home for the day over concerns “about the electrical wiring in the floors because everything was saturated,” said Virginia Kice, an INS spokeswoman.

However, damage in the INS offices was confined to soaked carpeting and ceiling tiles, which were strewn over desks and machines throughout the building’s fifth floor.

“Considering everything that happened, it’s lucky the damage wasn’t worse,” Kice said. “We had just got in a lot of computer equipment, which was not damaged.”

Kice said she expects the employees to be back at work today. The six-story building is also occupied by the Social Security Administration, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and other smaller agencies, none of which reported any damage.