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Classes were back in session at Imai Elementary School in Mountain View on Thursday, Aug. 29, after a break in the sewer line caused the school to close on Wednesday as crews worked to repair the problem.
The school realized something was wrong on Tuesday when a mixture of water and sewage was seen leaking near the school’s front parking lot, district spokesperson Shelly Hausman said.
It turned out that there was a sewer line break that had been “ongoing for some time” without the school knowing, possibly related to campus construction in the past few years, Hausman said.
Identifying and repairing the problem proved difficult, Hausman said, and it wasn’t until the early hours of Thursday morning that the issue was fixed. Crews will return in the coming days to complete their work, including potentially laying new pipes. A hole in the school’s parking lot will also need to be filled and asphalt will need to be re-laid.
“We are grateful for the plumbers who worked overnight to fix it so that students could return to school today,” Hausman said in an email. “We are also very thankful to the neighbors who endured the sound of machinery all Wednesday night. And always, we are grateful to our families and staff members for their flexibility and patience in this situation, in just the third week of school.”
The school district told families they were working on the problem at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, and notified them by 9:15 p.m. that repairs were taking longer than expected and that school would be canceled the following day, Hausman said. Back-to-school night was also canceled and will be rescheduled, she added.
District staff, city public works staff and plumbers were all involved in the repairs. Superintendent Ayindé Rudolph and the district’s assistant maintenance director both stayed on campus overnight on Wednesday to supervise, Hausman said.
Crews ended up fixing the problem at around 4:30 a.m. on Thursday morning, and families were notified at 6 a.m. that the school would reopen, Hausman said. Work included flushing the line using a large truck, removing sewage from campus and repairing the pipe.
