Posted on: January 16, 2024, 10:28h.

Last updated on: January 16, 2024, 10:28h.

Playtime Casino, located on Water Street in Kelowna, British Columbia, was overcome by water this week. Pipes burst and water flowed onto the floor and to outside the building.

Kelowna Capital News reported that the flooding caused the gaming property to shut down for about a half hour on Sunday afternoon.

Local firefighters responded at about 3:30 p.m. A sprinkler head had broken, according to the local news outlet.

After the water was cleaned up, visitors were let back onto the gaming floor. The casino was operating at normal hours on Monday.

Cold Temps Blamed

After the pipes burst, water flowed from the second floor of the gaming property to the outside and onto Water Street, according to Castanet, a local online news site.

No official damage estimate was released by the casino. But the repair costs were believed to be minimal. No injuries were reported.

Casino General Manager Clarissa Pruden told the news site that pipes running between the casino’s kitchen and parkade (parking facility) had frozen due to cold temperatures.

Temperatures in Kelowna on Sunday ranged between 28 and 34 degrees, according to AccuWeather.

One visitor at the casino, Clinton Wood, recalled to Castanet that he was playing a table game on Sunday afternoon. An alarm went off and officials ordered all visitors to leave.

Water Flowed Onto Street

Water was running all over the place and onto the street below by the parkade,” Wood recalled. “We got a pretty good car wash. All these people making all that money, and then the alarm went off. I joked that we were making too much money.”

He added there were “quite a few people” who were there at the time playing table games and slots.

Playtime Casino Kelowna features over 450 slot machines. There are also many table games such as blackjack, e-roulette, ultimate Texas hold’em, and EZ baccarat.

Kelowna is located some 242 miles east of Vancouver, Canada.

Other Burst Pipes

Other casinos recently have seen damages from burst pipes.

For instance, about a year ago, on January 13, 2023 Rivers Casino Pittsburgh shuttered temporarily due to a broken refrigeration pipe. Water from the pipe spilled onto the gaming floor.

Visitors were ordered to leave the building. Rivers Casino was cleaned up from the flooding. It reopened a few hours later.

Elsewhere, in October 2019 Encore Boston Harbor was forced to temporarily close due to a burst pipe.

Witnesses recalled how water came out of the ceiling and flowed onto a poker room. After cleanup, the gaming floor reopened.

The flooding took place some three months after the Everett, Mass. casino first opened.