Classes to resume at Barnstable High School following weekend flood

HYANNIS – Classes will resume on Tuesday at Barnstable High School following a boiler failure Sunday that resulted in heating units leaking water in 22 classrooms.

The flooding forced school officials to call off class on Monday while emergency cleanup crews removed water, replaced damaged ceiling tiles and other sections of classrooms that sustained damage.

Principal Pat Clark said many new textbooks were destroyed,  but damage to electronic equipment like tablets and iPads was minimized.

Hyannis Fire Lt. Robert Hennessy said they responded to the school just before 12 p.m. Sunday. A freeze up of pipes and a steam release triggered the fire alarms in the 1600 block of the building.

Restoration companies were busy Monday repairing damage from a weekend flood at Barnstable High School

“The areas of the building that were most affected were the 2600’s and the 1600’s. For those that were here some time ago, that’s the old foreign language wing and the math wing. The 1600’s was the area that had more water and some work to do to get that up to speed,” said Clark, during a tour of the building Monday afternoon. 

Some classes in the 1600 block may still be temporarily re-located on Tuesday.

Hennessy said school officials were already dealing with the freeze up for about an hour before the fire alarm went off. “They had extensive water damage from the first and second floor,” said Hennessy.

School staff had controlled most of the water flow by the time firefighters arrived. “We salvaged some equipment, electronics and such, and then we helped with the cleanup of the water that was throughout both of the floors,” said Hennessy.

While damage to technology was not as bad as it could have been, Clark said many textbooks took a hit.

“We are going to have replace ‘x-number’ of sets of classroom textbooks and some of them sadly were brand new, geometry and Algebra II books, and those are not cheap,” said Clark.

He expects the cost to replace them to be covered by their insurance policy and not the general school budget. The total damage cost was still being calculated while crews were cleaning on Tuesday.

Clark said they were lucky in terms of how little they had for loss considering the amount of flooding.

 

 

 

 



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