LEWISTON — Talk about stress.

Less than an hour before the 725 elementary students would start showing up for school Tuesday morning, Geiger Elementary School Assistant Principal Heather Blanchard found out the furnace wasn’t working.

Some pipes froze and began leaking, shutting down the furnace.

The temperature outside was about 13 degrees.

Blanchard kept her cool and called the superintendent’s office. Heating crews responded swiftly, got the furnace working and school did not have to be called off.

“Whew! Geiger heat just went back on and we are moving forward on a day of education,” Superintendent Bill Webster tweeted.

Blanchard discovered the furnace was off at 7:45 a.m. “The kids start rolling in around 8:25 a.m.,” she said.

Maintenance staff and the heating company, Seimens, were summoned. “They were here working on it by 8 a.m.,” Blanchard said.

She went into classrooms monitoring the temperatures.

The no-heat situation was shared with teachers and students. Students were allowed to wear their coats and jackets.

The coldest any class got was 66 degrees, Blanchard said. The main office was 60 degrees.

Within an hour the furnace was back on. “What happened was some of the pipes started to leak,” Blanchard said. “A sensor went out in the boiler.”

If the heat wasn’t corrected and the building got too cold, school would have been called off, parents notified and the building evacuated.

“We live in Maine,” Blanchard said. “These things happen.”

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