“The electricity should be up today,” Baldermann said this morning, adding that officials wanted to make sure the building was completely ready for students to return before reopening.
“We wanted to be proactive in protecting our students and staff,” Baldermann said.
RB Finance Director Chris Whelton said that preliminary figures indicate that the school may have suffered some $800,000 in damage to both the building and its contents.
Whelton said that it appears the district’s insurance carrier will cover the entire cost, except for a $1,000 deductible. Earlier in the week, school officials weren’t so sure about the level of coverage, since part of the RB campus is located within a flood plain.
Maps, however, indicate that the school building itself is not in the flood plain. The school’s deductible for damage within the flood plain, according to Whelton, is $500,000.
On Monday, the basement of the high school with as filled with as much as 4 1/2 feet of water, which seeped through every crack, crevice and seam in the floor and walls during the rains that fell on the area last weekend.
In one spot, water pressure blew a foot-wide crater through the concrete floor, flooding the area.
Andy Totten, project manager for McHugh Construction, who is overseeing the construction and renovation of the high school, estimated that as much as 1.5 million gallons of water filled RB’s basement, which is home to locker rooms, a weight room, wrestling room, storage areas and the school’s physical plant.
While school is scheduled to open Monday, the lower level will be off limits to students until the cleanup and repairs are complete. There was no damage done to the first floor of the high school.
“If we can get the cleanup finished by the end of the weekend, we may be able to use [locker rooms] in a couple of days,” said Tim Scanlon, assistant principal for curriculum and instruction. “But we won’t be able to use the weight room or wrestling room for a while.”