ELLICOTTVILLE — After a torrential downpour and clogged drains at Ellicottville Central School led to flooding over Columbus Day weekend, the cleanup process in the north end basement continues.
Board of Education member and district officials, earlier this month, toured where most of the damage was done in the basement of the elementary school section of the campus.
“We’ve had the dehumidifiers on for the past week and we’re still monitoring to try to figure out the situation,” said Superintendent Robert Miller. “We want to get everything dry down there before we jump to any rash decisions.”
Miller said because the cleanup process was ongoing, no damage estimates had been made yet.
On Oct. 6 and 7, heavy storms lead to several inches of water flooding school grounds, which inturn made its way to the building and into the ground-level windows in the basement, Miller expained, some of which are five inches off the ground.
“It was just so much water so fast that the drainage out by the driveway couldn’t handle that much that quickly,” he said.
In some of the classrooms, water cascaded over the windowsills and down bookshelfs, storage units and heating units along the outter walls, Miller said. Water also entered through an exit door as well as leaking through the bottom doors and into the hallway.
“When there was no more rain, the low points filled in, and unfortuantely they come up against the school,” he added.
Prekindergarten, fourth-grade and fifth-grade classrooms and the Committee on Special Education office saw the most damage in rooms where children spend time, Miller said. The classes had been temporarily moved to other locations on campus, he said.
According to Matt Lemmens, water manager of Servpro, the company who attended to the cleanup, the water receded into cracks in the floor where flooding occurred, so substantial amounts remained under the floor and could lead to mold.
“We ended up pulling up a little bit (of floor) so we could check it out because the meters were showing it was wet underneath,” Lemmens said. “All along the seam areas, there’s water in there.”
Lemmens said the only way to remove the water and sanitize the area would be to remove the flooring, many of which were covered in vinyl or carpet, as well as addressing the bottoms of the walls.
“When the water came in, it was only about an inch-and-a-half to two inches deep … but the water is sucked up the wall like a sponge to about 18 inches here,” he explained.
For the cleanup process, Lemmens said his team would remove all the flooring that was flooded down to the concrete base to make sure its dry and then spray an antimicrobial spray to make sure the area is clean.
“It is a lot of square footage,” he said. “The processes goes fairly quickly once we get the right equipment in here and the right amount of staff to do it.”
Over the past week, Servpro crews have been in the school, removing floors and drying out the spaces, Miller said. He said a “significant amount of moisture” had been taken out already.
As cleanup is completed, Miller said he plans to have a couple meetings to see what’s next.
“I don’t have any big decision to say, ‘we’re doing this,’ or ‘we’re doing that,’ because we’re still trying to figure everything out,” he added.
(Contact managing editor Kellen Quigley at kquigleysp@gmail.com)
