Students at a junior public school near Davisville were without running water for a day after an old water main ruptured near a construction site for the Eglinton Crosstown LRT.

An open letter written by a group of teachers from Eglinton Junior Public School and posted to a Facebook group for parents said that the principal notified staff and parents of the issue on the morning of Sept. 18.

“More than 650 lives were put at risk today because there was no running water in the Emergency Water Sprinklers in case of a fire and all they got at Eglinton Public School were unsanitary bathrooms filled with an overflow of children's feces, the lack of air conditioning on a hot September day, some bottled water, hand sanitizer and..... a jug of coffee from Metrolinx,” the letter reads.

According to the Toronto District School Board (TDSB), the water main was damaged during construction near the site of the future Mount Pleasant Crosstown LRT Station around 4 p.m. on Sept. 17. The water at Eglinton Junior Public School and an adjacent seniors home needed to be shut off so that it could be repaired.

Metrolinx originally estimated that the repairs would be completed by the time students arrived at school the following day, but that timeframe was later extended to noon.

It would take another few hours for the system to be flushed, the TDSB said.

In a statement, Metrolinx spokesperson Anne Marie Aikins said that staff were at the school to speak with parents and supply water and refreshments for drinking, hygiene and to flush toilets.

She also said that water main breaks “occasionally happen during large construction projects, especially in older neighbourhoods.”

“In this case, the water main is believed to between 90 and 100 years-old. There are plans to replace the water main after construction is completed in the area in 2019,” Aikins said.

Some teachers said they expressed concerns about fire safety and were told that there would be someone patrolling every floor to watch for fire.

“Many staff were asked at the end of the day, and it was a consensus that no one dressed as a fire marshal was patrolling the hallways,” the open letter said.

There was also concern about the use of bathrooms while the water was shut off. In the letter, teachers say they were instructed to help students flush the toilet using large jugs of water provided by Metrolinx.

“This is when the staff all had very nervous faces because that is against the policy of the Ontario College of Teachers. Teachers are not allow anywhere inside a children's bathroom and who will watch the rest of the students while the teacher is in the washroom flushing a toilet,” teachers said in the open letter.

Lindsey Walton, a parent of a child at the school, called the situation “life-threateining.”

“Water was brought in so that they could manually discharge toilets, still unsanitary, don’t know who was going in there to do that, that’s inappropriate, these are small children,” she told CTV News Toronto. “(The kids) came home holding it all day and really uncomfortable.”

The TDSB said that proper health and safety protocols were followed on that day and that parents were kept updated of the situation.

“TDSB health and safety protocols were followed throughout, including establishing a fire watch, which is standard practice when there is a power or water outage and involves staff assigned to actively check the building regularly for any fire hazards or smoke and signalling the need for evacuation if required,” spokesperson Ryan Bird said in a statement. “Parents received regular updates about the status of the repairs throughout the day via email and on the school’s web site. Learning continued in classrooms throughout the day.”

Metrolinx has now “built in a redundancy” so that if there is another disruption caused by the Eglinton Crosstown construction, the school’s water should not be impacted.

“Safety is our number one priority,” Jamie Robinson, director of community relations and communications for Metrolinx told CTV News Toronto. “Making sure we got water to the school as soon as possible, not only that in terms of just the water issues, but making sure children are safe going in and around construction sites. Making sure there is lots of signage.”

Robinson said that staff working on the construction site are taking every safety precaution, but “sometimes things just happen.”

The water was restored by Wednesday morning.