Exploding Toilets Injure Two Federal Workers

According to Washington Post reporter Lisa Rein, Sept. 28, the General Services Administration suffered from toilets literally blowing into tiny shards of porcelain, seriously injuring two federal employees.

Rein’s article said, “The toilet explosions became irresistible web fodder for snickering and bad potty humor. … The rare accident, which started in a water tank on the roof of the agency’s capital region headquarters Monday morning, quickly became representative of Washington’s ills — from the bureaucratic response to the venom it released against the government and its employees.”

“How many $1,200 toilet seats has the government bought, and here we have a toilet going boom!” mused Chuck White, vice president of technical and code services for the Plumbing-Heating-Cooling Contractors Association in Rein’s article. “I’m sure people think this is just one more example of our government in action.”

Rein reported the D.C. fire department was called to Seventh and D streets SW at 11:50 a.m. and the crew was told about an injured person on the fourth floor. They were directed to the restroom, where a woman had serious cuts to her leg from “flying debris.” Another toilet on the first floor had exploded within minutes of the first one, injuring another employee using the bathroom at the same time.

Rein wrote GSA spokesman William Marshall Jr. issued a statement Monday describing a “building mechanical incident” that injured at least one employee. He re-issued the statement 24 hours later, with assurances that the toilets were working again. He declined to be interviewed about what caused the explosion, the identities of the workers, their condition or which agency employs them, she said.

Apparently, water in a building as old as the General Services Administration, built between 1930 and 1935, needs to flow at a higher pressure to reach top floors, Rein explained. A storage tank boosts the pressure, using air as a spring to push water through the pipes, she wrote. GSA spokeswoman Emily Barocas explained the tank’s control system malfunctioned, plunging the water level below normal and allowing air to seep into the pipes, where it shouldn’t be because it gets compressed, according to Rein. “The air hit the toilet bowls when they were flushed, and the result was not pretty.”

“You get a geyser,” White said. “A recipe for disaster.” Although the average pressure in a water pipe is about 25 pounds per square inch, the slug of air in the GSA toilets was probably released around 60 pounds, he said in the article.

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