Air conditioner turned off in courthouse as it continues to dry

These dryers, seen on Aug. 22, were first brought into the basement of the Walker County Courthouse by ServPro last week after all floors of the facility suffered water damage from a burst water pipe the weekend before.

The Walker County Courthouse will be drying out more this week, although it may be possible to open it back up next week - depending on how soon the approval is given that the 90-year-old facility has dried out from a burst water pipe two weekends ago.

Walker County Commission Chairman Steve Miller noted Monday that during an Aug. 23 called meeting to close public access to the courthouse, ServPro official Keith Knight had indicated the plaster materials in the courthouse made it harder for the facility to dry out.

Officials discovered water damage on all floors on Aug. 21 after a water pipe burst, apparently in a bathroom on the third floor. That caused water to stand in places and also to come down the stairwell to the basement. Some wall and ceiling damage was also discovered.

After mop-up efforts by maintenance supervisor Shannon Whitehead on the first day, insurance officials were called and ServPro was brought in the next day.

While offices indicated they would continue to work employees out of the office, that didn't work out as expected as the courthouse is unbearably hot - not only with the recent heat wave outside, but inside as well.

"The courthouse is really hot inside," he said. "We have the a/c turned off and the reasoning for this is because the folks who are doing the cleaning (ServPro) asked us to do that. That helps us with the drying process. They have those big dehumidifiers, and all that stuff going on. They are the professionals. We are not.

"There are a lot of people out in readerland and on Facebook who are telling us how it should all be done. But again, we look to professionals, and those professionals who have been in business for years and years know how to do this. And their guidelines are to keep the a/c off until it is dried out. They will tell us when to turn it all on. That is why the courthouse had to be shut down."

The county's insurance company is telling the county to follow ServPro's guidelines, he said.

"They told everybody (at the Aug. 23 meeting) it would be a good week of drying out. We turned them loose then," he said. "So it is probably this coming Wednesday - it could be Thursday or Friday - but just as soon as they tell us to turn the a/c back on, we'll probably have to let it run a good day or so. Then it will start cooling off in that courthouse, because it is an old system. It takes a while to do those things. Then we will be reopening to the public when ServPro gives us that approval."

Once the courthouse is reopened, Whitehead is currently scheduled to oversee putting back drywall and taking care of other repairs, Miller said. If repairs turn out to be more than expected, the county will get outside contractors to help.

"People will have to be patient with us," he said. "When something catastrophic like this happens, it takes a little bit of time to clear up the issue and the matters we need to do to make sure the people of the county are safe getting into that courthouse."

Miller said closing for Labor Day will help with the situation.

No one knows for sure, he said, although he said "a good guess" would be that the courthouse might open as soon as the end of this week, or the Tuesday after Labor Day, Sept. 5. But he cautioned that it would depend on what ServPro reports in terms of the progress.

"We're relying on the professionalism of ServPro to give us that go-ahead," he said.

Miller said he has also had to deal with the situation while attending the Association of County Commissions convention in the middle of last week and with an illness he came down with at the end of the week. Miller said he needed to also be at the convention to investigate where more monies could be found for needed road work.

He spoke to Lt. Gov. Will Ainsworth on that situation and said Ainsworth told the convention goers he would work on getting all the counties more funding on infrastructure issues.

Miller said he had personally been in contact with the people in his office, Whitehead and District 2 Commissioner Jeff Burrough, who has led operations on the ground in Miller's absence.

"We're doing everything in our power to follow the guidelines of the professionals," he said. "We understand the necessity to open. We understand the public wanting to be in there. But we want to be safe and make sure that we don't have any issues in the future."

Miller said the District Attorney's Office had some damage, including a wall in the conference room there. "That backs up to that upstairs wall, is what it does above him," he said.

The Revenue Commissioner's Office has some water damage, "although not enough that we will have to keep him down for any length of time." The most damage appears to be in the stairwells where the water rushed down, he said, noting some drywall had to come out there.