Borough Manager Shane Pepe announced at the May 16 council meeting there was an explosion at the Emmaus Community Pool May 13.

“What happened was our filter tanks, somehow someway, became so pressurized that they literally blew the plumbing apart,” Pepe said. The pressure was so high when the pipes exploded it blew a manhole cover off located 100 feet from the pool.

Two borough employees were taken to Lehigh Valley Health Network, but Pepe said both employees are fine. One suffered a minor concussion and the other has some bruised ribs and minor cuts. They came back to work May 16.

“Our first and foremost concern is always our employees,” Pepe said. “They’re okay; we’re lucky.”

“Some of the scrap metal, which it came out, literally busted through a steel door which was only about a foot and half over one of our employees heads,” he said.

According to Pepe, the scrap metal bent the top of the steel door over and hit it so hard it knocked the door handle off, which they think is what bruised one of the employee’s ribs.

The borough conducted an internal investigation and there is a possibility two things occurred. The first is the pressure release valves on top of both filter tanks were working for a period of time and then stopped which resulted in the explosion.

“We think that they malfunctioned and it may have been from the pressure mounting,” he said. “The sand may have come up and gotten trapped in them and froze them.”

The second problem could have been caused by the flood. One of the caps that is put into the pool line to prevent water from going through them when they are winterized became dislodged during the flood. Pepe said they know debris got into them because when they flushed the lines in April a walnut popped through one of the lines.

When they were trying to pressurize the lines, they noticed one side was not working properly and was not pressurized. The system is set up like a “circular plumbing system” so everything should rotate all the way through. Pepe said the feeling was something was lodged in there. He said even after the explosion occurred and they pulled the plugs on everything, one side was still not pressurized, so they feel there may be something else still lodged in one of the lines.

Pepe said the real question is really what damage happened that they can’t see.

“You have a pool from 1972 and we know there is older plumbing. Did the pressure back up that hard that it blew those pipes apart?”

The sewer cameras the borough has are too big to fit into the pipes to see if anything is lodged or cracked.

They have a specialist coming from Harrisburg May 18 or 19 to do an initial assessment. The specialist will put a quick camera down the lines to check for internal damage.

Pepe said they are pretty confident there are not any underground plumbing issues, but they need to know for sure. “I hate to fill the pool up and then it empty out on us or worse, something else happens.”

Pepe said they will put a claim in for insurance, but they are not sure if they will be getting anything. It will depend on how the policy is written and whether or not the insurance company determines the damages to be part of the building or not. Pepe guesses they will probably not be getting anything.

“I don’t know what it’s going to cost,” Pepe said. “It may cost just a couple thousand, it could be a ‘we need to think long and hard about what we’re going to do;’ we don’t know any of that.”

Pepe said at the very least it will cost a couple of thousand dollars just to put together the plumbing pieces that blew apart.

In regard to the pool opening, “anybody that thinks they’re going to be swimming on Memorial Day in our swimming pool– the creek is available, the swimming pool probably isn’t.”

He said the borough will keep in touch with The Press and will be doing press releases to update the public as well as updating the Facebook page and borough website.