Mostly cloudy. High 38F. Winds WSW at 10 to 15 mph..
Cloudy this evening with periods of light rain and snow after midnight. Some mixed winter precipitation possible. Low near 30F. Winds SSE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of precip 70%.
Updated: December 1, 2021 @ 7:38 am
CAROLINE BONNIVIER — BENNINGTON BANNER Harley Colton works in the assembly room removing ceiling tiles at Southwest Tech on Tuesday.
CAROLINE BONNIVIER — BENNINGTON BANNER Tim Payne and Michael Lawler overlook the atrium near the Southwest Tech entrance on Tuesday.
CAROLINE BONNIVIER — BENNINGTON BANNER Harley Colton works in the assembly room removing ceiling tiles at Southwest Tech on Tuesday.
CAROLINE BONNIVIER — BENNINGTON BANNER Harley Colton works in the assembly room removing ceiling tiles at Southwest Tech on Tuesday.
CAROLINE BONNIVIER — BENNINGTON BANNER Tim Payne and Michael Lawler overlook the atrium near the Southwest Tech entrance on Tuesday.
CAROLINE BONNIVIER — BENNINGTON BANNER Harley Colton works in the assembly room removing ceiling tiles at Southwest Tech on Tuesday.
BENNINGTON — Mount Anthony Union High School’s extended Thanksgiving Day break is coming to an end Wednesday morning. But next door at Southwest Tech, where a pair of heating system leaks sent gallons of hot water pouring into classrooms, the situation is more complicated.
“Faculty and staff will return [Wednesday] tomorrow to put classrooms back together and prepare to re-open,” Southwest Tech superintendent and director Michael Lawler said. The school, previously known as the Southwest Vermont Career Development Center, hopes to have students back in the building, better known as the Tech Center, on Thursday.
It’s not yet known what caused two copper heating coils to fail, sending hot water gushing through the building. A similar leak happened last year, but didn’t cause significant damage, Anthony D’Onofrio, the facilities manager for the Mount Anthony Union School District, said Tuesday. While he speculated that corrosion, a “water hammer” caused by an increase in pressure, or an air bubble could all be the culprit, the cause has yet to be determined. The lines did not freeze, he said.
Southwest Tech was built in 1994, 30 years after Mount Anthony Union High School’s main wing was constructed.
Lawler and MAU principal Tim Payne said they’re working together to minimize the impact on both education programs.
“All of our teachers at the tech center know their classroom has been affected,” Lawler said. “They know where they’re moving, they know where they’re going to be. And it may not be an ideal location for them but it will work for the time being.”
As for the approximately 84 percent of Southwest Tech’s approximately 400 students who attend MAU? Those who attend a first-block Southwest Tech program should use their late entry privilege and arrive in time for second block on Wednesday, Lawler said. Other classes and students will be relocated to a space on the MAUHS campus until the tech center can reopen, Lawler said.
There’s not yet a dollar estimate on the damage done by the flooding, D’Onofrio said Tuesday.
With so much water in the building on Monday morning, the electricity in the tech center had to be shut off. But that affected the fire suppression system, which couldn’t be isolated to just the high school side of the complex. And without a working fire suppression system, neither building could be occupied. So the decision was made to send students from both programs home Monday morning, and then keep them home Tuesday, school officials said.
“It was a good call to get the kids out of this building,” D’Onofrio said.
With flooding no longer an issue, the high school can resume classes Wednesday. But the hoped-for return of students to Southwest Tech largely depends on how fast 30 dehumidifiers and 160 air movers provided by ServPro of Bennington and Rutland County, a contractor retained to help with the cleanup, can get rid of the substantial moisture left behind.
“It’s a drying process. We can’t bring people back any faster,” D’Onofrio said Tuesday over the considerable din of those fans.
The heat released by all that hot water, at 120 degrees Fahrenheit, caused condensation on surfaces as well.
“It felt like a sauna. It was that dramatic,” Payne said of entering some rooms affected by the leak. “In some rooms there wasn’t water damage, but the windows were completely fogged.”
And it was a lot of water, D’Onfrio said. He described arriving Sunday to find water pouring into the student store, and again Monday spraying out of the walls of the business management classroom.
Tuesday, workers from the school district and from ServPro were busy addressing the damage. Flooring and ceiling tiles went into trash bins, and workers removed baseboards and drilled holes in the wall to allow air to circulate through the walls.
D’Onofrio said ServPro had a crew on the scene within 90 minutes, and has had multiple crews working on the cleanup since Sunday.
ServPro of Bennington and Rutland County owner John Flood said the key to preventing mold from growing in a flooding aftermath is to get dry quickly.
‘You want to make sure to get extraction started and get drying started within 24-to -48 hours at the most. The drying process stops that time clock,” Flood said. He also said the company cleans and disinfects affected areas to further prevent mold growth.
Greg Sukiennik covers government and politics for Vermont News & Media. Reach him at gsukiennik@benningtonbanner.com.
Greg Sukiennik has worked at all three Vermont News & Media newspapers and was their managing editor from 2017-19. He previously worked for ESPN.com, for the AP in Boston, and at The Berkshire Eagle in Pittsfield, Mass.
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