Green Country Schools Seeing Damages Due To Thawing Pipes

Thawing pipes are wreaking havoc at some Green Country schools.

A water break Tuesday damaged three Grove high school classrooms.

There's no school Wednesday.

When most people think of pipes bursting, they think about the pipes to their water faucets.

Well at Legacy Christian School in Claremore, it was the pipes to the fire sprinkler that caused a wet mess.

When administrators at Legacy Christian School came to the building Tuesday, they never expected to find water damage.

Pastor Keith Wiginton of Legacy Christian School said, "I ran down here and it was a flood. Ceiling was coming in. It was crazy."

Wet ceiling tiles, soaking insulation, all caused by a burst in the fire sprinkler pipes.

"It was cold in that room so figured out maybe a pipe might have froze or something like that," Pastor Wiginton said.

Since students have been out for Christmas break, and class was canceled Monday because of winter weather, the heater in the school's indoor playroom was turned down.

"The children's play room and some nursery classrooms got flooded and of course quite a bit of flooding, so it went up some walls, so we'll have to see what all has to be done," said Wiginton.

When you walk through the hallways, you could still hear a wet squishy mess. Restoration crews said they spent an hour and half vacuuming water out of the hallway.

Crews from All American Fire Systems say they've been busy all day with calls about broken fire sprinkler pipes.

Elijah Clark, with All American Fire Systems said, "You can see where the fitting broke. Ice just expanded and broke right off."

Elijah Clark says there is one way to try to prevent this from happening.

"Keep heat on. You got to have the heat on or it's going to freeze," Clark said. "It's bad, but could have been a lot worse. We could have had to pull the lines out and stuff, but luckily it was just this little piece that broke."

"This is the first time this kind of thing has happened, so it's been a crazy day so far, but again, it's inconvenient but in the big scheme of things, it's a little thing," Pastor Wiginton said.

Prue public schools have canceled class for Wednesday with a water issues as well.