A pipe inside the school burst Mon., Jan. 14 leading to flooding throughout the school. This has led to hallways, classrooms, and lounge areas being closed off until further notice. The maintenance staff and other staff are trying to get everything clean and ready to be used.

“Underneath the stairwell on door 18 on the first floor, one of the pipes next to one of the sprinkler heads froze and burst while the water was still on. The staff reported a video, fire alarms went off and many people left the building.

“The water went from the stairwell through part of the Commons and impacted mostly the N-Wing over there, the athletic office, the athletic storage, the dance room, the health classrooms, the driver’s ed classrooms, and some of the offices. It ran about a few inches up the wall in some locations. We are currently drying the carpets and replacing part of the drywall,” assistant principal Dan DeBruycker said.

The direct cause of the incident is still not clear. There are potential reasons ranging from the drop of temperature over the weekend to how long the door near door 18 had been open.

“The temperature in that space due to weather, how long the door had been open, and the difference in temperature the school maintains on the weekends and holidays versus the schools day could have all been factors in the equation. We are trying to look into how to prevent such a scenario from happening in the future but we are also trying to focus on the cleanup and how fast we can get back to normal,” DeBruycker said.

The school has been trying to problem solve by calling in engineers facilitated with the school to see how the school needs to handle the temperature issue in that area. They have also been trying to move around classrooms so students’ schedules can go on as usual.

“We had our building engineer come in and we were discussing adding heat to a certain location in the building. The district and the engineer are trying to look into better district building compositions. My job was more focused on finding where the driver’s ed class would take place and which wing the health classroom would have to be moved to. We are fortunate that it wasn’t worse and we got to it as fast as we did,” DeBruycker said.