Broken faucet blamed for water damage at middle school

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A classroom at Beverly Middle School drying out on Wednesday after flooding over the weekend.

BEVERLY — City officials say a broken faucet is to blame for causing water damage on all four floors of Beverly Middle School last weekend.

Commissioner of Public Services Mike Collins said Wednesday that a faucet in a fourth-floor classroom malfunctioned sometime on Friday and ran all weekend until a custodian discovered the problem when he reported for work at 6:30 a.m. on Monday.

“It was fairly horrifying when you walk in and there’s water everywhere,” Collins said.

A total of 18 classrooms were damaged, with the water running down from the top floor to the bottom. The damage was confined to one section of the building.

On a tour of the school Wednesday, chairs were piled up on desks in several rooms while fans and de-humidifiers ran constantly. Ceiling tiles were missing, cabinets were pulled away from walls so that wet drywall could be replaced, and sections of walls were opened up in order to dry out the wall cavities.

Mayor Mike Cahill said he didn’t know yet how much the repairs would cost, “but I would imagine the overall cost is going to be pretty significant in terms of equipment and material that has to be replaced.”

He said the city’s insurance should cover most of the cost except for the $50,000 deductible.

Cahill said about 30 custodians and city workers responded on Monday morning and began the cleanup. The flooding caused the cancellation of summer program classes for about 90 students on Tuesday. Classes resumed on Wednesday but in a different part of the building, away from the water damage.

Cahill said the damage will not affect the start of the school year, which is Aug. 30.

“In terms of it being safe and usable, you could probably hold classes in there today,” he said.

Collins said there was “minimal” damage to books and other school supplies.

The school, located at 502 Cabot St., was built at a cost of $109 million and opened in 2018. It houses grades 5-8.

Cahill said officials need to identify the exact cause to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

“If there’s something that needs to be changed we’ve got to understand that,” he said.

As for the problem happening in a newer building, Cahill said, “You could have a building one-day-old and something could go wrong.”

Collins said officials do not think the cause of the flooding was “malicious,” such as a someone intentionally plugging up the sink and leaving the water running.

“I think we ruled that out,” he said.

He said the city needs to investigate further why the faucet malfunctioned.

Staff Writer Paul Leighton can be reached at 978-338-2535, by email at [email protected], or on Twitter at @heardinbeverly.

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