Schools tallying damage (1/15/05)

Electricity has been restored. The flood waters have receded. Kids are back in school.

Now the Jay School Corporation faces the challenge of dealing with the damage which resulted from the Jan. 5 ice storm and the subsequent problems.

Jay Schools superintendent Barbara Downing received preliminary damage reports Friday from employees in each of the corporation’s buildings. The top items on the lists, and those which will likely be the most costly, were damage to school roofs and heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems.

“There was more damage to HVAC control systems than I had imagined,” said Downing.

There was also damage to fences, buses, windows, overhead doors and Internet towers to go along with the obvious tree and limb damage.

Maintenance employees were able to get heating systems up and running at all Jay County schools. But, there were also a variety of problems within those systems, involving computerized controls and other parts.

Roof damage of varying degrees was reported at at least five schools, the worst of which was at Jay County High School. East Jay Middle School and General Shanks, Judge Haynes and East Elementary schools also reported roof damage.

The major leak at the high school resulted after the 140-foot tall Internet tower at that building fell under the weight of the ice. The impact created a low spot on the roof where water accumulated.

There was damage to steel trusses, and the contents of two classrooms in the vocational area had to be moved. A preliminary report estimated the cost to fix the roof, which was expected to need complete replacement, at $250,000.

The cost to replace the Internet tower is $15,000. The 80-foot Internet tower at Judge Haynes also fell and will need to be replaced at a cost of $3,500.

“The other thing that we were concerned about (was the computers),” said Downing. “We tried to limit damage. We’ve tried to be proactive, and it worked well.”

School computers were turned off to avoid power surges when electricity came back on. While complete damage reports won’t be turned in until Friday, Jan. 21, Downing said she thought computer problems were very isolated.

She also said damage to buses and windows seemed to be minimal. Phone lines were not in complete working order when school returned Thursday, but the problems were minor and have been fixed.

In addition to damage created by the storm, Jay Schools also suffered food losses. While most of the frozen food was able to be salvaged, food in refrigerators was lost.

Employees are itemizing the food losses to come up with a dollar amount.

Complete damage estimates with dollar amounts will not be available until at least the end of next week.

Downing said she has been in contact with Indiana Insurance through local agents Steve Arnold and Steve Stockton and expects a lot of the damage from the storm will be covered.

In the meantime, she said she’s looking forward to schools returning to their routines.

“We’re just getting back to normal,” said Downing. “Hopefully Monday we’ll be back on a normal school schedule.”

She said school attendance policies would also be back to normal Monday.[[In-content Ad]]