Multiple Crises Had The Boulder Valley School District Facilities Teams Operating In High Gear For Days

Press release from the Boulder Valley School District:

January 30, 2022

The hurricane force winds that whipped the Marshall grass fire into a historic firestorm were just the beginning of a multi-day, multi-crisis response for BVSD’s Facilities team.

Extreme high winds in the morning ahead of a winter storm that was rolling in on Dec. 30 had Frank Martinez, Buildings Maintenance Supervisor and Dillon Recen, Trades Maintenance Supervisor anticipating they would be dealing with wind-related damage in the coming days before students and staff returned from Winter Break.

“It caught my attention when I was called by Troy (Russell, Electrician and Trades Lead) about the extreme winds in southwest Boulder because it’s not unusual to get strong winds there,” Recen said. He recalled that Russell also mentioned that the wind had started a grass fire south of Boulder.

Not long after that call, staff learned that the wind had caused power to go out at eight schools in Boulder, putting them at risk for frozen pipes as the predicted winter storm moved in. Recen and members of the Facilities team started looking at the possibility of a prolonged outage and planning for mitigating the risk of broken pipes. With a web of pipes throughout school buildings, supplying domestic plumbing such as drinking fountains and sinks, as well as fire sprinklers and the HVAC system, multiple breaks could cause significant damage.

“In terms of the confluence of events, it was ramping up to be bad,” Recen said of the situation.

While staff were developing a plan to turn off the water supply and drain the systems in order to protect the buildings in Boulder, the fire grew and utilities went out in Louisville and Superior. At one point the district had lost power, natural gas or both in 16 schools. Power was restored in Boulder before crews took action, reducing the risk there. Staff turned their immediate attention to the fire and the fate of the buildings in Louisville and Superior.

Like so many members of our community, BVSD staff watched in horror as flames roared into the towns. Staff anxiously watched security camera feeds from schools and monitored the fire’s progress, wondering what the fate of our school buildings would be. Early after the blaze ignited, BVSD’s HVAC staff were able to turn off ventilation systems and close exterior dampers to limit the intrusion of combustion byproducts, but there was little else that could be done to protect the buildings.

Late on Dec. 30, it seemed our buildings had been spared. A few members of the Maintenance team and district leaders were allowed into the burn area the next day to check on the buildings. In those early visits to schools, staff assessed the condition of the buildings to determine what needed to be done and if it was even possible to reopen schools as planned on Jan. 5.

“I was amazed and relieved on that first day we were allowed back into the schools,” Molly McLoughlin, Director of Facilities said. “There was very little ash or soot in the buildings. The only places it entered were under door sweeps or through leaky windows or skylights.”

The winter storm that brought welcome moisture and the end of the fire also brought freezing temperatures and associated other challenges. The immediate threat of the fire was gone, but with no power and natural gas, the danger of freezing pipes remained. Once crews had access to the schools they began draining the plumbing systems to try to mitigate freeze damage. The prospect of how to clean buildings without heat, power or water also loomed.

The district was granted more access to buildings on Saturday, Jan. 1 and our Maintenance crews mobilized.

“When we got the information that the district was still planning to open schools on Jan. 5 as scheduled, we knew it would be hard. We didn’t wonder if we could do it, but tried to figure out how we would do it,” Recen explained.

Immediately, Martinez contacted local remediation companies ATI and ServPro for support with cleaning buildings. Over the next several days, power was returned to schools, and staff performed a marathon of repairing pipes and wind damage (in the fire zone and other parts of the district); supporting contracted restoration crews; deploying 160 hand washing stations and filling them with 3200 gallons of water, delivering 31 pallets of drinking water, and numerous other as needed tasks.

“We were so tired, but then we would drive from one school to another through burned neighborhoods, and it didn’t matter. We knew we had to keep going to get the schools open,” Recen commented.

Staff gave up holiday plans and scheduled days off and came in to help. More than 150 contracted staff joined 58 BVSD staff members working in 12 hour shifts or longer to tackle the work. They got the job done and schools opened on schedule. Mother Nature had one more punch though, with another storm that dropped several inches of snow and called on Maintenance crews to mobilize once again.

Both Recen and Martinez commented that this was the most challenging experience in their 14 and 17 years with the district respectively, even surpassing the 2013 flood.

“I’m incredibly proud of this team,” Martinez remarked. “Teamwork is how we got it done. We were all in it together and everyone stuck together until it was done.”

This press release was produced by the Boulder Valley School District. The views expressed here are the author’s own.