By Melissa Copeland
February started off on a semi-sweet note. All last week, students were faced with some pretty nasty weather that led to school closures and late starts.
Crews were up at the college by 4 a.m. making sure roads were passable. If roads are not clear and safe, then classes could be canceled, such as the case on Monday when campus was closed entirely.
On Tuesday, campus was put on a two-hour late start. However, even though students got the chance to sleep in, crews did not have that same luxury. The two-hour delay was in place in order to give the crews some much needed extra time to get campus cleaned up.
A water main broke Wednesday morning, causing any classes after 10am to be canceled. “If water is shutdown for two continuous hours then the bathrooms become unsanitary and campus must be shut down,” said Rick Croot, Peninsula College Assist. Director of Facilities Planning & Operations. Students were eager to leave campus for a much needed day off, however, crews were immediately hard at work to get the campus up and running again. The fight was not over though; once the water main was fixed there were still a few problems facing students, mainly heating.
“The crews have been here since early this morning re-firing heating systems campus wide. Many of the buildings are heated with boiler supplied water, and they need make up water to assure they do not get into an pressure condition and cause damage to not only the boilers but also the buildings they are installed within,” said Croot.
Due to the length of the outage, the college spent most of the next day trying to catch up on heating. Students may have experienced plumbing issues as debris had been stirred up by the main break.
“As far as I’m concerned winter can move 100 feet up the hill,” said Croot, “I’m done with it!”