The sight and sound of dripping water cascading through all three floors of Newtown High School's F Wing, within the "newest" section of the Berkshire Road building, where students would normally be engaged in class or sitting down for lunch was eerily out of place.

As was the sight of clean-up contractors with three-foot wide squeegees pushing nearly an inch of standing water along a third floor corridor more than five hours after a broken water pipe was discovered Monday morning.

Leading The Newtown Bee through areas of damage just after 11 am, Superintendent of Schools Chris Melillo explained that by the time he and Director Of Facilities Bob Gerbert were notified of the potential damage by custodians arriving on site, buses were already rolling out for first pickups. Instead of throwing the entire town's bus scheduling into turmoil, Melillo decided to instead continue having the high school's students dropped off at school, get as much truncated work done as possible, and then dismiss everyone at 10 am.

Parents and staff were immediately notified by the superintendent.

In the meantime, students normally occupying approximately 40% of the facility's education space affected by the water pipe break were temporarily relocated to the gym and auditorium, which were not impacted.

"All the damage is confined to that far end of the building," the superintendent said pointing toward the cafetorium at the far western corner of the sprawling facility of more than 184,000 square feet. He said the cause of the break had not yet been determined.

“[Professionals] have to ascertain whether [the pipe burst] from the cold, or whether it’s something else,” he told The Bee.

Although he said classes at the high school would not be able to resume at least for Tuesday, February 7, Melillo was planning to allow scheduled basketball game to be played as scheduled in the gym Monday evening.

As preliminary clean-up continued, the superintendent walked past rooms and hallways that still had noticeable amounts of standing water on the floors and dripping from the ceilings, as well as soggy books and materials on desks and shelf tops.

He said by early estimate, some technology including ceiling-mounted projectors and some servers were impacted, along with the school's wifi system.

Melillo believes it will be “a couple of days at least” until the extent of the damage is known. The technology equipment cannot be assessed “until it completely dries out,” he added.

Some classrooms also had compromised ceiling tiles and fixtures.

"The affected area represents about 40 percent of our classroom space," he said.

With no custodial staff in the building Sunday, it was impossible to tell when the leak started, Melillo said. But the source was eventually determined to be a water pipe between the ceiling and roof line of the third floor between a classroom and common area near the western end of the latest building addition.

"When custodians arrived around 5:30 and did their walk-through of the building, that area is the farthest point," Melillo said. Nonetheless, he and Gerbert were made aware of the issue by 6 am, when the decision was made to keep all the local transportation routes flowing status quo.

The superintendent said students and parents would be notified of the Tuesday closing in short order, and any further closings would be determined as educators and staff returned to specific areas of the compromised wing to assess damage to materials and technology.

Check back for updates as this story develops and view a couple videos of the damage on The Newtown Bee's Facebook page.