Late in the night of Wednesday, March 29th and early into Thursday morning, heavy thunderstorms rolled through Jackson, leaving Prep with a number of small leaks throughout campus. However, the flooding in Ms. Suzanne Eskrigge’s room (G1) was far more serious than anywhere else, but it didn’t seem to be coming from a leaky ceiling. Ms. Meredith Lang, who shares the room with Ms. Eskrigge, was the first to find the water when she arrived before 7:45 am. She called Ms. Eskrigge, and told the senior high office. Ms. Lelia Manning and the maintenance staff were on the scene by the time Ms. Eskrigge arrived minutes later.

According to Mrs. Eskrigge, she “had seen water in the room before, but the lab was on my mind.” AP Biology had been working on a complicated, time-sensitive DNA lab for several weeks with the culminating day being Thursday. “The real story is how the AP kids kept going,” Mrs. Eskrigge said. They continued to work on the lab while maintenance staff used Shop-Vac water vacuums and mops to clean up the water. The students were “troopers” according to Mrs. Eskrigge.

Towards the end of first period, the cause of the flooding was finally found. The culprit was a broken tube leading from the water main to the deionizer, a machine that de-ionizes water. When the tube broke, water flowed unrestricted from the main, leaving about two inches of water throughout the stockroom shared between G1 and G2 and the left side of Mrs. Eskrigge’s room.

Most of the water was cleaned up by Thursday afternoon, but water may continue to seep out from under cabinets and laboratory tables for days to come.