Water Line Break Leads to Class Cancellations at Empire Beauty School in Malden

Empire Beauty School recently had to cancel their classes due to a water line break that caused flooding out the front door.

In a brief interview with Malden Patch Thursday afternoon, an Empire Beauty School representative said the break happened late morning on Tuesday, Jan. 21.

"Please be advised that as of 12 p.m. (Tuesday) afternoon, the Malden campus will be closed due to a broken water pipe in front of the building," reads a posting on the Empire Beauty School at Malden Facebook page. The Facebook page also had posts stating that the beauty school, located at 347 Pleasant St., would be closed on Wednesday and Thursday.

The representative said that day and evening classes were canceled. She added that classes may resume starting Friday afternoon.

Jeff Manship, director of water utilities for the city, explained what transpired the day of the break.

"The water line to the building erupted inside (of it)," Manship said Thursday afternoon. "They hired a contractor to repair it. We assisted with shutting off the water and we shut off the valve in the grassy knoll it broke so then we had to excavate the old valve out. When we got down there it basically fell off so we had water coming out of the sewage line.

"We were able to get a good containment after an hour or so and we're just finishing up as we speak."

Manship said the "whole thing got started when two 90 (degree) elbows inside the building rusted away and flooded out the salon."

Manship discussed how the recent dip in temperatures may have had an effect on the water line at the beauty school.

"With the cold weather it probably got to the line and as the cold weather continued, it continued to freeze the line and snapped the 90s inside the building," he said. "When we responded we saw water coming out of the building. We found where we could shut off but the only way you can repair a line coming inside a building on a flat foundation, or in other words there is no basement, is you have to excavate outside first and then excavate inside so you can have access to the pipe running up the side of the foundation wall."

According to Manship, he called local construction firm Callahan Inc. to handle the outside excavation work, and then the property owner opted to hire the same company to do the interior work.

After handling the exterior work, Callahan "hand-dug inside, put all the pipe together and now we're just finishing up" the valve-related work, Manship said.

It's unclear how much damage may have been caused due to the flooding of the beauty school.

Originally posted at 5:46 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 23.