A water main located in the wall of the S-102 computer lab leaked water into the computer lab, which threatened the computers in the room and rendered the room useless on the night of Wednesday, the leak occurred due to the extremely cold temperatures that were present during the night. After inspection from USD 383’s IT department, the 11 computers that came in contact with water were deemed undamaged and not in need of replacement. While the water could have damaged the wall or carpet, the overnight custodial crew was able to remedy the problem before any actual damage occurred.

“As soon as the leak was discovered our night crew was able to get to it,” custodian Robert Bartholic said. “The crew shut down the system and started sucking up the water before it was able to do any damage. The night crew got to it so fast that we were able to get fans in there the next day.”

The custodial crew had to shut down climate control to that area in order to continue work on solving the issue, which was expected to cause some areas to be rather cold or rather warm, depending upon the area.

While the leak didn’t affect the students or the teachers too much, it did affect the custodial crew.

“The only thing it did was stop the routine cleaning that the night crew does,” Bartholic said. “We all came down to the lab and helped start that drying process which made it to be a real team effort in order to get it all done as quickly as possible. With the custodial crews being in the rooms so often we can usually catch things like that quickly enough to where it doesn’t become a problem.”

According to Bartholic the nature of the leak itself resembles a leak that would occur when a car radiator freezes up. Considering the problems are identical, so are the solutions as the only solution to the leak is to clean up the mess that is the result. As of yesterday, the room is now open and available to teachers for use.