LCCVI Photos

Electricians, heating and cooling experts and disaster restoration crews are at LCCVI assessing the damage after a two-inch water pipe broke filling the school’s basement.

Director of Education Jim Costello says around 9 am yesterday a custodian on his rounds went into the boiler room and found a pipe in the basement gushing water. Officials say the line serving the football field sprinkler system froze.

The school was quickly evacuated and the students sent home. In an hour and a half, the water was six to seven feet deep and 10 feet deep in some spots, according to Costello. “That’s the deep end of a pool.”

It took nearly eight hours to pump about 38,000 gallons of water out of the basement yesterday . Today, they’re assessing the boiler and the electrical panels which are all housed downstairs.

Costello isn’t sure whether there will be school Friday but “it doesn’t look good” right now (Thursday at 11:50 am).

And he’s expecting the repairs to building will be costly since the boiler is the main heating unit for the building.