Burst pipes plagued Texas school districts as they coped with winter storm
Some 65 buildings in the Cypress-Fairbanks (Texas) school district sustained water damage in the winter storm that has disrupted much of the state of Texas.
KHOU-TV reports that two to three inches of water had inundated parts of Langham Creek High School in the Cypress Fairbanks district.
"This was just a mess right here," says Cy-Fair ISD chief operations officer Roy Sprague. "All the wet ceiling tile kind of floated its way down here.”
The orchestra pit in the auditorium filled with water.
"Without having heat in the building in the extreme conditions we had in Houston, it caused a lot of pipes to break, unfortunately,” said Sprague.
Administrators fear that more freezing temperatures may cause more pipes to burst.
'We know some of these pipes are probably fragile and when water pressure gets turned back on, we could have some more breaks that we’ll have to deal with through the weekend to be ready for Monday,” says Sprague.
Cypress Fairbanks Superintendent Mark Henry discussed the damage in a letter to the community.
"In addition to the water damage, many schools’ food supplies were completely lost due to the sustained outages," Henry wrote. "Combined with the fact that several campuses are in areas where there was unreliable water service, we felt that it was best to close our schools this week in order to allow more time for recovery and restoration."
Elsewhere in Texas, the Arlington district reported that as of Thursday at least 23 schools and other district buildings were found to have been damaged by flooding from burst pipes, according to the Dallas Morning News.
Numerous districts in the Austin area also were reporting burst pipes and other damage, KXAN-TV reports.
Video from KHOU-TV:
