Residents at 221 S. High St., Warsaw, were finally greeted with some heat early this morning.

Rich Hoffman, facilities manager at Bowen Center, reported to StaceyPageOnline.com this morning, “We anticipate that everything is fixed and we’re up and running. We’ll be monitoring it all day today, tomorrow and Sunday.”

The 7-unit apartment building at 221 S. High St., Warsaw, is owned by Bowen Center and operates on an old steam boiler system. On Tuesday, Jan. 8, the boiler stopped working. Broken boiler plates were to blame, according to Hoffman.

Friends of one of the building’s residents notified StaceyPageOnline.com on Wednesday of this week that Bowen Center had done nothing to resolve the problem, other than hand out space heaters to the residents. Those space heaters, however, were not only not safe for prolonged use, they were not enough to heat the large apartments.

Last night, day nine without heat, resident Hailey Charles also contacted us to see if we could help provide a warm place to sleep for her, her husband and their three children, ages 5 years, 3 years and 4 months old. Bob Weaver, administrator of the Kosciusko County Health Department, immediately secured at hotel room for the family.

When contacted on Wednesday, Hoffman said they were waiting on boiler plates to arrive from New Jersey and provided a time frame of no more than 48 hours to fix the problem. The matter caught the attention of Weaver, who went to investigate the problem Wednesday afternoon.

On Thursday morning, Hoffman told Weaver the heat would be repaired within 24 hours. And it has been.

In a message left this morning, Hoffman said they sent a contractor to Ohio to pick up the boiler plates and, at about 8:30 p.m. last night, repair work began. The crew worked throughout the night and, by about 5:30 a.m. today, heat was restored.Questions remain, however. On our Facebook page, the public wants to know why Bowen Center allowed the residents to go over a week without heat and why Bowen Center didn’t pay to have the residents housed in a hotel until the problem was resolved.These are questions StaceyPageOnline.com is pursuing.