A woman from the General Services Administration (GSA) building was taken to a hospital with serious cuts to her leg from 'flying debris' caused by the toilet blast.
Another loo exploded within minutes of the first, injuring another employee using the bathroom at the same time.
Chuck White, vice-president of Technical and Code Services for the Plumbing-Heating-Cooling Contractors Association, said that while he's never seen an exploding toilet himself, it is something you read about in plumbing textbooks.
'If you're not careful about how you release pressure, the contents of that bowl will come up like old faithful,' White told the Huffington Post. 'Plus, you would have the surprise factors,' he added.
The explosion was because of a control system malfunction that caused a rise in pressure in the water storage tank, GSA spokesman William Marshall said. This in turn caused the plumbing system to 'malfunction' when flushed.
The 2,500 federal employees in the eight-storey building were sent a memo declaring bathrooms off-limits because the plumbing had malfunctioned and the situation was dangerous.
Source:metro
