If you’ve been living under a rock and do not know what happened on January 22, the cold air froze and burst the sprinkler pipes over one favorite American History teacher’s classroom, causing a flood.

Mr Pierson’s room that day was about 44 degrees, and when water freezes, it expands, and that is what caused the pipes to burst.

“It basically looked like a fire hose in the ceiling with black water coming out,” Mr. Pierson said.

Mr. Pierson was in the library when everything happened because his room was so cold that day.

“Mr. Fink ran across the hall and said to me, ‘Come look at your room,’ and I was like, ‘Oh, crud,'” Mr. Pierson recalled.

The whole school evacuated the building and most ended up at IMS at the end of the day as emergency officials rushed to the scene.

The day after the incident was a day full of clean up and a day off for students and staff.

“When I left the scene after everything happened, the room was probably shoe deep in water, and the water leaked under the door and actually under the wall into the library, and it covered the floor of Mr. Fink’s and Ms. Kincak’s rooms. The water also splashed and covered the walls,” said Mr. Pierson about what happened to his room.

Maintenance here at the high school used machines to suck up the water. They dumped it out and dried everything up.

“I want to thank the maintenance staff for cleaning my room,” Mr. Pierson said.

When asked if there was any real damage done to the room, he said, “No. I can’t believe. I thought the projection unit would go and the computer would go, but all of that worked the next day, and a couple of Pez dispensers fell down.”

Mr. Pierson is referring to his collection of over 300 Pez dispensers, which he has on display in his room.

On Thursday, Jan. 24, students and staff were back in the school and Mr. Pierson continued to teach in his beloved classroom once again. According to some students, the room still smelled “a bit musty” from all of the water and some of his books were still wet.

Some students also started a GoFundMe page which raised $407 for anything Mr. Pierson needed.

When asked what he did with the GoFundMe money because his room was not that damaged, Mr. Pierson replied, “I bought pizza for all the maintenance staff that cleaned my room. They were very touched by that. I also completed the Presidential Pez dispenser collection by ordering those online. Then, my speakers don’t work right in the ceiling, so I bought some nice speakers.”

There are other students who bought him new Pez dispensers and some who emailed the Pez company to see if they could give Mr. Pierson some more Pez dispensers, which was “two boxes with about 100 Pez dispensers in each,” according to Mr. Pierson. He has been giving out some in classes as prizes.

“One of the things that was neat about the GoFundMe was that I looked on the page and on the list of donors, and a lot of the kids that donated are kids I had in the past who are now in college,” Mr Pierson said.

One can only hope that this does not happen again in the school, but who knows?