Water line break forces early dismissal at Crane Middle School
Crane Middle School students got an early start to their weekend after water line repairs went awry midFriday morning, school officials said.
Water had been bubbling up from the area where the school’s domestic line leads off to the city’s water grid, said Assistant Superintendent Michael Hoffman, and crews had been working on locating the source early Friday morning.
Crane Middle Principal Ryan Tyree said the trickle of bubbling water had been discovered late Thursday, and he and his staff had prepared for the possibility that the school might lose water for a short time, depending on how bad the leak was.
Once Crane’s crews and a private contractor moved the wet dirt away from the leaking pipe, Hoffman said, they could see that mud had formed a kind of “seal” around the break.
“It was being held together by the earth,” Hoffman said, but without the seal and pressure of the dirt, the line disintegrated further. Water to the school was briefly shut off around 11:30 a.m. while crews brought in heavy equipment to try to quickly fix the domestic line, Tyree said.
However, the crew accidentally broke a city fire line that was underneath the school’s pipe, said Dave Nash, city of Yuma public affairs coordinator. While the water to the school had been shut off, water from the fire line flooded a retention basin next to and behind the school and lowlying areas.
The time it would take to repair both lines prompted the decision to dismiss early at 12:30 p.m., Hoffman said.
A private contractor was working to repair the lines as of Friday afternoon, and Hoffman said they had planned to be done by sundown.
Tyree said that school would resume as normal on Monday.