On Monday Feb. 27th, PV families were notified that the high school schedule would be starting two hours later due to a water main break. The unprecedented event impacted students and staff more than anticipated.
The incident was first reported when one of the lunch ladies came in early to start cooking and noticed water and ice everywhere. Calls were made and school was ultimately delayed as a result to give staff time to clean up the flooding and make it safe for students and faculty to navigate around.
While some people are familiar with what a water main break entails, many PV students are unaware of what causes them. When the ground gets cold, it gets cold in layers. As the ground warms, it warms in layers too. The detrimental phase is when the layers shift, sometimes shearing pipes, causing them to break, much like the break at PVHS.
While it was an unfortunate event, there are some positive aspects that emerged from it. Construction workers poured the cement recently and it will be up to par. Additionally, they did work underneath the area to make the cement less likely to heave, making the main entrance safer for everyone to enter.
The situation caused some problems for the students and staff beyond the late start. The pickup and exits were not as accessible during the construction. “Every single day for the past four years, other than this week, I have walked past the main office to get to school. I was shocked how much of an impact the water main break would have on going to and from school for some students, including myself,” Senior Kira Pielak said.
Arguably the largest problem caused by the water main break was the flooding. The water infiltrated some of the offices and the commons, which led to many issues. Custodial crews brought machines to suck water out of the carpet until the machines were full. They proceeded to repeat this cycle. Additionally, they ran an array of fans to speed up the process.
Some students wonder about the precautions needed to prevent this incident from recurring. However, pipes burst often in the winter and it is unpredictable. The pipe that burst in the front of the school was not very old, but still managed to burst. ¨I was expecting it to be an older pipe from when the new front was done, so I was surprised about that,” Principal Mike Hawley said.
Due to the adjustment made by the students and teachers, along with the immense amount of help that went into cleaning the school post-flood, gratitude was evident. “Our staff, admin and custodial crew were so appreciative to watch how all the teachers and students did such a nice job adjusting to it,” Mike Hawley added.
While the water main break was not an anticipatory event to start off second semester at PVHS, the community handled it very well. Thanks to students and staff adjusting to the schedule change, cleaning crews and construction workers, the issues have been adequately resolved in a timely manner. There have also been some takeaways from the event, especially thoughts regarding the location of the main office in the future.
Students and staff have become accustomed to navigating through the construction work around school, specifically regarding the different parking situations, blocked off areas and more. PVHS has gone through many changes in recent years to accommodate for a plethora of needs, especially with the growing student enrollment, but it is only adapting more over time with each new addition.
