Frozen Pipe Closes School Gym

PHOTOS SUPPLIED BY WILLIAM BAZYK

Maintenance crews are cleaning up flooding from a burst pipe in the Arlington Memorial High School gym. The gym will be closed for the remainder of the school year.

Andrew McKeever

GNAT News Project

ARLINGTON — Sub-zero temperatures over the New Year’s weekend caused a water pipe in the Arlington Memorial High School gymnasium to freeze and burst, causing flooding across the gym floor.

As a result, the gym will be completely closed and shut down for all school activities for the remainder of the school year, according to an announcement released Wednesday morning by School superintendent William Bazyk.

A team of officials, including the school’s insurance adjuster, was on the the scene yesterday to evaluate the damage, he said.

A loose piece of insulation was the cause of the frozen pipe. The insulation was hidden in an area that was “not visible to the eye,” Bazyk said, and praised the school’s building staff for a quick response which contained the damage.

The school’s insurance policy will cover the bulk of the cost of the repairs.

However, the floor will not be immediately replaced. A $1.6 million facilities project approved by voters during last March’s town meeting calls for the gym’s roof to be replaced, with the work scheduled to begin on April 1.

Given that, it made no sense to replace the gym’s floor when in less than four months the roof would also be replaced, he said. 

But there may be one small silver lining to the event – it could lower the overall cost of the facilities project, Bazyk told GNAT in an email Wednesday morning.

“… the gym was not going to be replaced and actually was a reason the original bids were so high because the floor had to be protected,” Bazyk stated in the email. “The roof would have had to be done in sections. Our hope is this will now lower the cost of the project as well as shorten the completion timeline.”

Arlington Memorial High School Principal Tim Stewart and Athletic Director Ashley Hoyt will be searching for alternative venues for basketball games and physical education classes normally held at the school’s gym.