After the flood

Aug. 27--EAST WENATCHEE -- "Are you sitting down?"

Eastmont High School principal Lance Noell was in fact sitting down when he got the cell call last Thursday morning from athletics director Russ Waterman. He was parking his car in the EHS lot, while Waterman was inside the school.

"The library's flooded," Waterman told him. Then, as he walked on through the school interior: "Wait -- the media center's flooded too."

And there was more. When Noell got inside, he found multiple first-floor classrooms and offices drenched from a water leak in the chemistry lab one floor up. This as the school neared the end of a $37.6 million renovation, with less than two weeks to go until the start of classes.

"My first response was anger," said Noell, entering his second year as EHS principal, "which was immediately replaced by sorrow. People had worked so hard."

The leak apparently started sometime late Aug. 20 when a 3/8-inch polyethylene tube, which fed water to a second-floor laboratory workstation, slipped free from its coupling. The tube came to rest aiming upward and spat water at the ceiling all night, at a pressure of roughly 87 pounds per square inch, said project manager Jay Garthwaite.

The water destroyed the lab's suspended ceiling, rained back to the floor, then traveled laterally along joins and channels beneath the floor to drip into the library and media center below. The business lab was swamped, along with the computer lab and some nearby general purpose classrooms. Twenty-four running computers got soaked, as did wallboard, insulation, carpets, desks and cabinetry.

"It was terrible," said Mark Marney, Eastmont School District's executive director of secondary education, who viewed the damage Thursday morning. " ... Very, very disappointing. That space was looking beautiful and ready to go."

Miraculously, though, almost no library books or other printed matter were lost in the deluge. Garthwaite said the precise dollar amount of damage isn't known, but said it could be in excess of $250,000.

However, both Garthwaite and Noell said Tuesday the destruction won't affect the start of classes a week from now.

"If you show up on the 3rd at 7:30, you wouldn't know what happened," Garthwaite said.

By Tuesday, the construction crew was deep into repairs. Removal of all the water and soaked structure materials was declared complete Tuesday morning, meaning renovation could proceed with little fear of future mold outbreaks.

The slipped tube was within a fumehood assembly -- a lab appliance manufactured for schools by Sheldon Laboratory Systems of Crystal Springs, Miss. Each fumehood is a self-contained unit that provides safe ventilation, water flow and drainage for student chemistry experiments.

Garthwaite said the coupling is being assessed by Case Forensics Corp. of Mountlake Terrace, to determine how the fault occurred.

The district's multiple tiers of insurance will fully cover the damages, but the Eastmont School Board approved a resolution Monday to make emergency expenditures -- without opening the job for bidding -- to keep the school on its scheduled start.

Eastmont High's remodeling has been two years in the making, forcing the district to parcel out its students among multiple school buildings. Among other measures, the project added 12 classrooms, a weight room and an auxiliary gym; expanded space in the school commons; and added and improved formerly tight stairways for better student foot traffic. It's part of a district-wide remodeling project that already completed work at Grant Elementary and Sterling Intermediate.

Almost 1,400 students are expected to show up when classes open next week.

Reach Jefferson Robbins at 509-664-7123 or [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at @JRobbinsWW.

___

(c)2014 The Wenatchee World (Wenatchee, Wash.)

Visit The Wenatchee World (Wenatchee, Wash.) at www.wenatcheeworld.com

Distributed by MCT Information Services