Cranston High School East and Edgewood Highlands Elementary will be closed Tuesday due to flooding from pipes that cracked in the severe cold, a situation that is also affecting buildings in Bristol-Warren and Warwick.
Two schools in Cranston will remain closed on Tuesday as a result of broken water lines linked to the weekend's bitter cold temperatures.
And all told, at least four schools statewide, as well as the Warwick City Hall annex, were closed on Monday in whole or in part due to burst pipes, officials said.
Raymond L. Votto Jr., the Cranston schools' chief operating officer, said a pipe in a first-floor restroom at Cranston High School East burst during the night Sunday, flooding the nearby hall and administrative offices with about 2 inches of water.
Edgewood Highlands Elementary School in the city's Edgewood section had to be evacuated Thursday after a water line there broke, flooding the school. It remained closed on Monday as well as administrators scrambled on a plan to relocate the school's 231 students.
Both Cranston East and Edgewood Highlands will remain closed on Tuesday.
Cranston schools Supt. Jeannine Nota-Masse called the water damage "very destructive" in a video posted on WPRI.com, saying that "at least two classrooms need to be completely reconstructed due to water damage. The water coming from ruptured pipes in a restroom on the main level of the high school leaked through ceilings and damaged 150 computers, she said.
"Water, I've learned over the past week or so, is devastating to us," Nota-Masse said.
The mayor's office in Warwick, in a news release on Monday afternoon, said that multiple city offices would move temporarily into the vacant John Greene Elementary School building, at 69 Draper Ave., as a result of a burst pipe at the City Hall annex, which is located behind the brick main City Hall.
The offices are the Building Department, the City Council office, the Community Development office, the MIS Department, the Personnel Department, the Planning Department and the Tax Assessors office.
The city said some offices may have limited capabilities on Tuesday, and that there was no timeline on the reopening of the annex building.
Warwick's Toll Gate High School was also closed Monday because of water line and sprinkler system breaks. Supt. Philip Thornton said school staff were evaluating the situation Monday morning to determine the extent of the problem and how long it would take to fix.
Mt. Hope High School in the Bristol-Warren school district suffered a break in the sprinkler system that required the school to be closed Monday, according to the Rhode Island Broadcasters Association's school cancellation list, though all other schools in the district remained open.
Bristol-Warren Director of Finance and Administration Pauline Silva said the sprinkler line problem was detected at about 2 a.m. and caused little damage. School had to be closed because with the system shut down for repair, the building didn't have a working fire-suppression system, as required by the fire code. She declined to predict when the work would be finished, but said it wasn't complicated.