Earle Water Dept. office floods

Earle Water Dept. office floods

Broken pipe causes deluge, destroys records

news@theeveningtimes.com

Insurance adjusters will be back in Earle to re-evaluate the damage to the city’s water office.

Water Department Manager Danny Clark said the bids to repair the office came in higher than anticipated and that the insurance settlement needs to be re-adjusted.

“They came in a little higher than what the insurance company is trying to pay,” Clark said.

Clark said the city is looking at having to spend about $25,000 for the carpentry work and another $14,000 for plumbing and electrical work.

“It’s a pretty good sized project,” Clark said.

The water office was flooded last month when city crews accidentally hit a water line that was connected to an underground storage tank which no one knew was still hooked up.

The storage tank had about 250,000 gallons of water in it and completely flooded and destroyed the water office.

The contents of the building were a complete loss, including records which dated back to the 1940s.

Clark said the insurance company’s figure does not take into consideration the dollar value for the work that the city did in-house.

City crews have already done the interior demolition work, saving thousands of dollars.

“I’m going to talk to the insurance company and see what terms we can come to,” Clark said. “You know how insurance works.

They are going to try and get off as cheap as they can. So we’re going to have to negotiate to see if we can come to terms.

Right now they aren’t giving us any consideration for us doing the demolition work.”

Clark said he expects the job to take about two months to renovate the office.

“To look at it, it’s terrible,” Clark said. “But I think we should be back in a couple of months. I will find out more about it. But I assure you we will work within our means and we will have a nice office when it is done.”

By Mark Randall