LITTLE VALLEY — Operations at the Cattaraugus County Center Building on Court Street were mostly back to normal Monday after a burst pipe resulted in water flooding down three floors and into the basement Tuesday, July 16.

The building was closed to the public July 17 as a large-scale clean-up got underway and continued through the work week and into the weekend.

County Administrator Jack Searles told the Press on July 18 that about 30 air blowers and 15 dehumidifiers were running in full force throughout the county building in hopes of having offices open for the public Monday.

A thunderstorm that passed through the area July 16 caused a power outage in Little Valley, which kicked on the generator at the county building, Searles explained. At about 2 p.m., when power switched back from the generator to the village system, there was a lull in the water pumps followed by an electric surge turning them back on, causing a waterline to burst in the fourth-floor mechanical room — often referred to as the penthouse.

“The net effect, we believe, caused what people tend to call a ‘water hammer,’ when turning pipes on and off quickly and you hear a mini boom in the pipe,” he said. “There was a water line that primarily fed the air conditioning of the building. That 2-inch line separated and you had a fully charged 2-inch line with pipes fully engaged pumping water up to the penthouse.”

From there, Searles said the water flooding the mechanical room naturally flowed to the lowest point — down the back staircase and onto the third, second and ground-level floors and ultimately into the basement where the building’s server room is located.

“The first office that it hit was (the District Attorney’s) office on the third floor,” he said. “It flooded out the DA’s office and the grand jury room… It swamped that office and began backing up.”

The water then flowed down the stairs to the second floor, hitting the surrogate court’s offices. Continuing down, the water then flooded the lobby on the ground floor, which had between 2 and 3 inches of standing water, before going down into the basement.

“There was an IT staff room there that was completely taken out,” he said. “We were able to tarp the servers and get them turned off. It was the lowest point in the building, that’s where the water was accumulating.”

Unfortunately, the IT room has a false floor with space below that for water to flood, Searles said. While the servers were saved, he said now they still have to get the water out from under the basement floor.

“We shut off the water source as quickly as we could,” he said. “There was a considerable amount of water that had impacted the building by the time we got to it though.”

MEANWHILE, because the mechanical room has a lot of ductwork that can lead throughout the building for the A/C, Searles said water also began leaking into the plenum space between the penthouse floor and third-floor ceiling, essentially following the air ductwork through the building.

“It was slower to start, but it was longer to last,” he said of the plenum flooding. “You get some freaking things happening.” The former minority office currently being used by the county attorney for an intern had water leaking through the light, resulting in about 2 inches of standing water.

Water continued through the plenum space to the second floor and began leaking from the ceiling into the economic development offices, Searles said, where the water seemed to stop in the plenums.

“There’s really no major damage on the ground floor or the basement floor as a result of the water getting into the plenums,” he said. “It took a while for that to materialize, but then it went on longer after we shut off the incoming water. It’s still infiltrating everything.”

At about 4 p.m. July 16, county officials put out an all-hands-on-deck request to all departments in Little Valley to help with immediate clean-up, Searles said. Employees from the DPW building and the sheriff’s office and the jail who were available also came to the main county building — between 30 and 35 people — and began using squeegees, mops and towels.

“One of the good things that occurred was we were able to dam off on all floors the infiltration of water into the elevator shafts,” he said. “That would have been a natural course, so there was no water in the shafts at all.”

AT ABOUT 6 p.m. July 16, the county put a call out to SERVPRO of Jamestown to begin the drying process as county employees were removing saturated ceiling tiles on every floor. He said they brought about 30 pieces of equipment into the building that have been running continuously since and still extracting water from the air.

“And of course, there is a relatively high noise level associated with that,” he added. “We’re experiencing some puddling in some of the ceiling areas, so we’re getting that taken care of.”

SERVPRO also has the technology to read the amount of water in the floor or ceiling as well as the side edging of the building under the molding along the walls, Searles said, and they have been going room to room testing the moisture levels. Where the water content is high, they’re pulling the molding out and letting it dry out.

“By the estimates we’re getting from them, they believe we’ll be fully functional back in the building by Monday,” he said. “We will still have ceiling tiles and things like that down, there will still be ventilation equipment going.”

Over the weekend, SERVPRO plans to use sanitation equipment on the walls and ceilings and any carpets that aren’t being scrapped entirely.

“You literally have no idea what layers of the building that water went through before it got it its final place,” Searles said. “It always amazes me the impact water has on structures.”

ON THURSDAY afternoon, they were still pinpointing areas where water continues to pool and the ventilation mode is in full force, Searles said. He said there were periods on Wednesday when either the HVAC system or water had to be completely turned off, which meant no air conditioning in the offices.

“We had to repair the pipes so the system could be under pressure again,” he said. “Today, we had lots of IT people going through and doing analysis to see whether there is any damage to IT equipment, and the good news is that appears to be OK at this point in time.”

Although all the servers have off-site back-ups, Searles said they’d rather not have to rely on them if they don’t have to.

“We’re on the mend right now. It’s just a matter of getting the moisture out of the place,” he said. “With the hot temperatures we’ve had, we want to make sure we get in there and make sure everything is sanitized for the general public and all the employees.”

Departments the building closure effected included the DMV Office, Treasurer’s Office, Clerk’s Office, Office of Emergency Services, Administration and Legislative Offices, Economic Development, Planning, and Tourism Offices, Human Resources Office and all Little Valley courts offices, District Attorney’s Office and County Attorney’s Office.

The Department of Motor Vehicles was still operational in Delevan and Olean, while the treasurer’s office was also open in Olean for transactions.

“There is a skeleton staff working in the Little Valley building,” Searles said. “There are some departments that are considered statutory that have to continue operations, so we have minimum staffing associated with some of those.”

The sheriff’s office and jail side of the building were reportedly unaffected, and county services at the old Little Valley school building offices, including the Board of Elections, Youth Bureau and Health Department, were also unaffected.

Searles said there was “a massively desperate effort: to try to get all the water out of the Little Valley county building, and for the most part they succeeded. While things were already in good shape July 18 with the HVAC system back online, he said they were still getting high moisture readings in some areas, which means the dehumidifiers continue to run.

“It’s like we’ve got two systems fighting each other right now,” he said with a laugh. “I’ve got the dehumidifiers generating all this heat and I’ve got the air conditioning trying to cool everything down.”