By Summer Crawford

News Editor

@summercrawfordd

Waking up on Sunday mornings is supposed to be relaxing, a time of serenity. To workers and managers of the Coppell Independent School District Service Center, an education support center for members of the community, last Sunday was anything but peaceful.

At approximately 8 a.m. on Jan. 4 when workers entering the building found puddles at their feet, it was discovered that a majority of the center had experienced a surge of water from a broken pipeline.

“The water line under the building, it’s actually the water line that feeds the fire sprinkler system, burst,” Assistant Superintendent for Business and Support Services Sid Grant said. “It forced a great deal of water up and into the building, flooding most of the north side of the building.”

Several areas of the center were damaged as a result of the expansive flood. According to Grant, these areas include the business office, accounts payable, payroll, purchasing, employee benefits, child nutrition, maintenance, print shop, bus passes and custodial office areas. The technology department and computer service room were able to escape the damage.

In order to repair parts of the building, Grant worked with a restoration company which did the cleanup and drying of the area.

“We don’t know a dollar amount yet, but most of it we were able to take care of by extracting the water out and drying it,” Grant said. “[CISD] had over 100 fans in the building and about 20 dehumidifiers that helped dry out the building, so that’s going to be the biggest cost of the cleanup, besides repairing the pipe under the building. Then we are probably going to have to replace the carpet as well.”

Because of CISD’s quick reaction to the crisis, the level of damage done was not as nearly severe. The flood did not hinder communication within the Coppell community regarding parents and students.

“By discovering it when we did and getting right on it, we were able to minimize the amount of damage, thereby saving a lot of money, possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Grant said. “We are not sure how long the water had run, although it probably wasn’t over two or three hours. We were able to continue operations as normal even though we had fans blowing and it was kind of loud.”

Grant says that Coppell can expect everything except the carpet to be repaired and back to normal by the end of the week. The CISD Service Center is not limiting access to the building so community members are able to enter and leave as they please.