A whole cold hole

It was a bit surprising when Sandra's parents reported that they didn't have any running water this morning. It's been this cold before (-4°F) this winter and certainly much colder in the past few years. Their kitchen and bathroom sinks are on outside walls, but, even so....
Woody had a small electric heater that he put under the cupboard beneath the kitchen sink. The heater warmed up the pipes nicely, but still no water. Hmm.
Their apartment was added on to our house when we moved in together in 1982. The core house itself dates back to 1816. There are lots of little cellars and crawlspaces, reflecting the history of adding-on, a kind of stone soup housing project. One of the little cellars runs the length of the house. You get in there via a trap door under Marley's bed in the laundry room. Most of the cellar is about three feet high, stretching out to maybe five feet at the far end.
A plastic pipe runs from our water main, through this mini-cellar, back into the ground, and then around back to the MacGregor's apartment. It's worked fine for more than 25 years.
What's new this winter is a hole in the foundation, perhaps a foot in diameter, dug out by some animal or group of animals. We've heard some noises under the family room and suspected that some critters had moved in. Indeed. This hole let in the sub-zero air which fell to the bottom of the mini-cellar and froze the pipe.
We talked with Mike and got the name of plumbers who'd worked with him, good guys, all. Plumbers are busy on days such as this, however, because lots of folks have frozen pipes. Luckily, we had a portable hair-dryer.
With care, I warmed the pipe enough to get the water flowing again. Sandra could tell my comings and goings by the thumps under the floor which resulted from my hitting my head on another water pipe or floor joist. We brought a small heater into the cellar to raise the temperature above freezing. In the meantime, Sandra stuffed an old pillow in the invaders' tunnel.
Mike and Michael Francis came by a short time later and, with a bit of magic cement, patched the hole. We'll have to come back to in the spring when we can get at the foundation more easily. I was able to tie up the pipe, getting off the lowest part of the cellar floor, away from whatever other cold air falls in.
We suspect that some critter(s) will be quite surprised when it comes time to go out for a bit of fresh air, but we'll all deal with that another day.