On the morning of Friday, September 16th at around 11 am, the water pipe at the entrance of Karns High school burst. According to some witnesses, the line exploded in a gush of water and debris, leaving the school with no water. This resulted in the administration having to make the hard decision and send the student home at 1 pm.  

According to Benjamin Collins, an athletic director at Karns, the leak started small and was fixed by maintenance that morning or so they thought.

     “About 45 minutes later, there was like an explosion,” said Collins. The explosion was reported to have looked and acted like a geyser.

   “At that point, I got back on the phone with maintenance when a west Knoxville utility guy happened to be passing by and stopped to help and called in all these people then blocked off the road and started working,” said Collins. 

It wasn’t until around 3 pm that the pip was patched up and the water was restored to the school. The explosion was reported to have been caused by a pressure build-up in the line.                                                                                                                                                                               

“They took care of all the bigger things like parts of the pipe on Friday and then came back on Monday and Tuesday to clean up the mud and stuff,” said Collins when asked about the cleanup of the debris. Collins was rather funny with the whole situation as if it has happened multiple times in the time span of Collins working here.

In conclusion there have been many experiences where there have been explosions but never like the one that happened that day.