North Trenton school back to normal after frozen pipes thawed

By Bradley Bennett

BELLEVILLE – North Trenton Elementary School had a tense Monday and Tuesday as the main water pipe froze and workers scrambled to thaw it before more extreme measures, like a temporary school closure, were needed.

It was discovered Monday that the main pipe into the kindergarten-to-Grade-6 school was frozen due to the cold weather that plagued the area over the weekend. The school remained open, with drinking water and buckets of water for flushing toilets brought in, hand sanitizers put in place, and extra custodial help deployed, according to Nick Pfeiffer of the Hastings and Prince Edward District School Board.

“This is typically a temporary measure that can work for a day or three,” Pfeiffer told QNet News.

The frozen pipe into the school was located and exposed so it could be thawed out. But that didn’t fix the water problem; it turned out that the main water pipe from the city of Quinte West, located off the school property, was also frozen. City workers had to thaw that pipe.

By about 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, all the frozen pipes had been thawed and water was restored to the school.

Pfeiffer said that if the problem hadn’t been solved quickly, options being looked at were temporary water lines, sending students to other schools, or a temporary school closure.