Little leak, massive mess

The West Hempstead school district may soon want to consider calling Captain Planet  and his Fire and Water Planeteers if disasters to its facilities continue to unfold.

First it was fire that took down the George Washington elementary school last summer. Now it’s a flood at the Cornwell Avenue elementary school. Let’s hope it ends there.

At some point during the July 4 weekend, when all of the district’s facilities were closed, a water fitting burst beneath a sink in the second-floor girls bathroom at Cornwell, causing a flood that destroyed floor and ceiling tiles, carpeting and a gymnasium floor.

“Where last summer was a clear act of vandalism, this year, it is a small inexpensive part that has caused a big problem: water — it just infiltrates everything,” Deputy Superintendent Richard Cunningham said. “So, I’m very happy it wasn’t a major failure of something big and structural.”

Although the flood caused a significant amount of damage to the building, district staff caught it early enough to prevent further disaster. Having discovered the situation on July 5, the district was able to act quickly. “We knew how to respond,” Cunningham said, “and we, fortunately or unfortunately, have a lot of experience dealing with remediation and insurance companies, and that experience from last summer definitely helped us now.”

While the leak began on the second floor, it caused more extensive damage to the first floor of the building, according to Cunningham. On the second floor, the water entered several classrooms and unglued tiles from the floor, but on the first floor, it destroyed ceiling tiles in the library, where it soaked the carpet, and the faculty room, where it also unglued floor tiles. Water also ran down the first-floor hallway into the music rooms and from there seeped into the gym, where there is a later of cork under the floor. As the cork absorbed the water and expanded — up to three feet in some spots — it raised the gym floor.

“It quite literally looked like a skateboard park,” Cunningham said. “I mean, it was wavy.”

After conducting an initial cleanup themselves with the help of cleaners and custodians, district officials reached out to an environmental company to take proper precautions to ensure that nothing that could retain water or grow mold was left in the building. Following stabilization, the district went into reconstruction mode. Cunningham said he expected all the damaged ceiling tiles to be replaced by July 15, and the rest (new flooring and carpeting) to be completely by mid-August.

The district’s SCOPE Summer Camp was moved to the Chestnut Street School to accommodate the work, all of which was covered by insurance.