Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Collapsed Blacksburg gym: A tangled heap of problems
Officials are looking at where to place students and faculty. The cause and cost are unknown; answers could take months. All other schools in the division have been examined by engineers.
Justin Cook | The Roanoke Times
BEFORE: FEB. 3 Blacksburg High School player Terrence Travis shoots over Cave Spring defender Josh Henderson in the Blacksburg High gymnasium.
Justin Cook | The Roanoke Times
AFTER: FEB. 15 The bleachers in the Blacksburg High School gym were extended, which prevented the roof from falling completely.
Justin Cook | The Roanoke Times
Neighbors survey the wreckage of the gymnasium at Blacksburg High School on Monday. Montgomery County Public Schools must get a demolition permit to remove the debris.
Matt Gentry | The Roanoke Times
The Blacksburg High School gym became a pile of rubble when it collapsed Saturday afternoon. School officials are trying to find new places to hold classes.
Matt Gentry | The Roanoke Times
This aerial view taken Sunday shows the collapsed gymnasium at Blacksburg High School. No one was injured when the roof caved in Saturday afternoon, causing the building to collapse.
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Most of Montgomery County's students and teachers return to the classroom today, but the 1,200 students and 150 faculty and staff at Blacksburg High School must continue to wait.
On Monday, administrators announced that the high school would remain closed this week after the gymnasium roof collapsed at 1:37 p.m. Saturday.
In the meantime, administrators are scrambling to figure out how they might come up with classroom space in another building. Whatever the plan, the goal is to keep all Blacksburg High teachers and students together on one campus, Principal Michael Hurst said.
"I would envision a meeting every day," Hurst said. "Nothing is off the table."
Neither building inspectors nor the school system has released a cause for the collapse. The cost of the damage was also unknown Monday, although the building is "fully insured," interim Superintendent Walt Shannon said.
Meanwhile, school facilities staff and mechanical engineers from Blacksburg engineering firm OWPR worked through Monday to inspect each of the division's 19 other schools to ensure their safety. Those schools were scheduled to open today with a one-hour delay after missing 12 days to winter weather already this school year.
"We will not put any student or any faculty at risk," Shannon said.
The inspections were "walk-throughs," checking for obvious issues such as large cracks, holes or sagging supports, said Todd Poff, an OWPR engineer.
No one was injured in Saturday's collapse, but two people did narrowly escape the cave-in.
Poff and school facilities worker Steve Brumfield were in the Blacksburg High gym less than a minute before the roof collapsed. They were looking at a hole in masonry work around a metal beam in the ceiling.
"We really didn't have an opportunity to go any further than that," Poff said.
He said he heard crackling from the opposite end of the metal girder, and the pair ran for safety.
For now, the building is closed to everyone except structural engineers, town officials and the school system's maintenance workers, Blacksburg building official Cathy Cook said.
She said the damaged area will also need to be reviewed by a third-party structural engineer, who will inspect the steel connections. The Montgomery County School Board would hire that engineer and, once the inspection is finished, the town would get a report.
Shannon said that report could take months to complete.
The school system also needs to request a demolition permit to clear the debris.
"Once the debris is cleared, we'll inspect the site and remaining building," Cook said.
She said she will let school officials know when the town has deemed the building safe, and it would then be up to school officials to decide how to phase students and staff back into the building.
Relocation of students will require careful planning, Shannon said. "You just can't open up a building and dump that many people in it without a plan," he said.
Administrators spent 90 minutes Monday in a closed-door meeting discussing what to do next.
One option would be implementing a revised schedule at Blacksburg Middle School that could mean middle school students attend classes earlier and high school students attend classes in the evening, Hurst said.
Some churches also have offered religious education classrooms, but Hurst said the school would run better if all its staff and students were in one place.
Busing students to Auburn High School or Eastern Montgomery High School doesn't seem logical because of lengthy drives, he said.
Parents of Blacksburg High students say they're hoping the school will reopen soon, but if not, some support at least one idea floated about.
Sandy Weber said she told her husband, Mike, that if her son, Aaron, could not return to the high school, that having them use the middle school for night classes would work.
"They do need to be together," Mike Weber said. "They can't be split up, and they need to be in a classroom setting."
The Webers said they favor shortening the high school's instructional day, if that idea is implemented.
But the plan would hamper some students' social lives and sports would affect instructional time. Freshman Tyler Crocker, for example, often plays music at church in the evenings.
His mother, Sue Ellen Crocker, said getting the students back in the classroom should be paramount.
"I don't care where they go, I just want them to get back to school," she said.
But moving them from the high school will have other implications, teachers said.
Much of their instructional material and student work is inside the school.
Moving to a new school would mean starting from scratch in some instances, social studies teacher Amy Stevens said.
"There's a lot more obstacles than I think people realize," she said.
Starting today, Hurst is expected to have offices in a community room at Blacksburg Middle School on Prices Fork Road. The high school's main phone number should ring into that building, he said.
Staff writer Sharla Bardin contributed to this report.
