KING COUNTY, Wash. — Several schools in western Washington will be closed Tuesday and possibly Wednesday due to burst pipes caused by the cold weather.
Students woke up to a nasty situation at Seattle University Monday morning: a frozen pipe burst in the wall of a college dorm, the Hopkins Building, and flooded the first floor and a portion of the stairwell.
While crews clean up the brown, disgusting mess, Seattle U students are now displaced until further notice. Students are being asked to stay away from the Hopkins first-floor area and to check their emails for updates.
Still, college students aren’t the only ones dealing with bursting pipes across the region.
Glenwood and Skyline elementary schools in the Lake Stevens School District were closed Tuesday with some classrooms and learning spaces wet and in need of cleaning. Staff and maintenance and custodial teams "need time to reset learning spaces and prepare for students," the district wrote in a statement. Before- and after-school activities, clubs, events and practices are also canceled.
Dickinson Elementary/Explorer Community School and Wilder Elementary in the Lake Washington School District were also closed.
For impacted schools in the Lake Washington School District, the cold weather caused fire system pipes at both locations to freeze and burst, flooding some classrooms. Before- and after-school activities and child care were canceled.
"Although heat was functioning in the building over the weekend, the age and design of the sprinkler system likely contributed to this unfortunate incident," the district wrote in a statement. "The Lake Washington School District Facilities team responded immediately to stop the flooding and began cleaning and drying out the classrooms."
Meadowdale Elementary School in the Edmonds School District will be closed Wednesday due to "significant water damage throughout the building."
Though most buildings damaged by water from broken pipes are now safe at Utsalady Elementary in the Stanwood-Camano School District, the school was closed Tuesday for cleaning and repairs.
Littlerock Elementary will be closed Wednesday due to a "catastrophic water leak" over the weekend after two pipes froze and broke, sending hundreds of gallons of water through the building.
"There is an enormous amount of water damage, mostly at floor level," the district said in a statement.
All schools in the Sultan School District were two hours late on Tuesday due to broken water pipes at Sultan High School and Gold Bar Elementary.
Western Washington saw record-low temperatures over the weekend. Many areas saw numbers below or well below freezing on Jan. 12. Those cold temperatures persisted through Sunday before temperatures started to rise on Monday slowly.
Bellingham's high of 10 degrees on Jan. 12 was the coldest daily high temperature in 59 years since Dec. 16, 1964.
According to NWS Seattle, the morning low of 14 degrees on Sunday was the coldest temperature in the city since Nov. 14, 2010. The coldest temperature Seattle has seen since record-keeping began was back on Jan. 31, 1950, when the temperature was a frosty 0 degrees.
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