Northridge High School 2901 Northridge Road Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35406
est. 2003
THE FEBRUARY 2018
NORTH RI D GE
www.northridgereporter.wordpress.com
REPORTER
The student est.voice 2003of Northridge High School
VOLUME 15 ISSUE 4
HIGH TIDE AT NORTHRIDGE Pipes burst, flood classrooms over winter break
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VER THE WINTER BREAK, pipes connected to Northridge’s sprinkler system burst, covering a portion the campus. According to the Executive Director of Facilities for the Tuscaloosa City School System, Jeff Johnson, the flood was caused by a combination of weather conditions and poor maintenance. The cold winter temperatures ruptured the lining of the overhead sprinkler system, causing the pipes in the gym, auditorium, the upstairs classrooms, and the North wing of the school to burst. The damage was found on Jan. 2 by a contractor who was working with Harrison Construction; the company building the new gymnasium. Faculty were later alerted via email of the events that took place. Northridge’s Assistant Principal, Keith Jackson, was one of the first to know what happened after a teacher who had heard about the incident asked Jackson’s wife what they knew, assuming that they had been informed as well. “When we walked into the building, there was a waterfall coming off the upstairs in front of the lunch room,” Jackson said. “There was probably two or three inches of water on the floors downstairs.” One teacher who suffered significant damage to their work space was Kathleen Oatts, who is in charge of the school’s food lab. “There was water coming from the ceiling and down the walls,” Oatts said. “There was water in the ovens, water in the stoves, in the microwaves. Everything was sitting in water.” Like some teachers whose rooms were flooded, Oatts’s
food lab requires technology, like microwaves and ovens, plete their tasks as educators. With that in mind, the adto be replaced. The replacement of technology was an ob- ministration created a plan to keep classes functioning by vious procedure after the flood, but what may have taken moving teachers who were affected by the flood, to alterthe staff by surprise were the methods that were used to native classrooms while construction workers repaired the clean up classrooms. damaged rooms. “The initial thing is to get the water out of the build“[We had to make a plan for the teachers] that would ing,” Jackson said. “They had a company called ServePro minimize the stress for them,” Jackson said. “We put towhich is a company that does that type of work to come gether a good plan for the teachers that were affected in, and they pumped water out of the building, and by the flood. It’s one of those things you can’t plan once they got the majority of the water out, they put ahead for because you don’t know where it is going in blowers and exposed walls to dry out wood or to flood.” any other materials that could be dried out. ProbOver the course of six days, Northridge was reably three days of [cleaning the school] was getfurbished and almost completely recovered, but ting the water out of this building, so that was the costs could be drastic. the biggest part of the recovery.” “I would be scared to guess,” Jackson Once the water was cleaned from the said. “I would dare to say it’s going to be campus, Harrison Construction then hundreds of thousands of dollars. If you had to remove all of the walls and compared [the school] to a home, it’s ceilings that had been exposed to the so much bigger than a house. I don’t downpour. know if it will be a million dollars, “You could stand in Mrs. Lane’s but it’s going to be hundreds of classroom and see all the way down, thousands of dollars just based on through every room, all the way to the amount of work because you Mrs. Fuller’s classroom, because all had to hire a crew of painters to of the walls had to be ripped out; they come in, and it was a large crew to were soaked,” Jackson said. “They had get it done in the time that needed to KATHLEEN OATTS, to do an overhaul. [In the lobby outside occur. The state has good insurance for FACS TEACHER of my office] there was no ceiling. They had situations such as this; it’s not going to be to rip all that sheetrock out and replace it and a burden to the school system. When you’re paint it. They did all of that in a matter of about four not in a building for a period of time, and especially or five days, so [that was] pretty impressive.” during cold weather, the risk of this type of thing is high.” When school was back in session, some teachers’ rooms were not in a condition where they could properly com-
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There was water in the ovens, water in the stoves, in the microwaves. EVERYTHING was sitting in water.
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WILL MCLELLAND MANAGING EDITOR
Theater room, sets, costumes damaged by water
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AT A GLANCE SPRING SPORTS: TRACK AND FIELD
sage spread the bad news. “I was like, ‘oh my God, not the costume room,” he said. But it wasn’t his first such call of disaster in the theater rooms. “It’s like the 15th time it got flooded,” he said. “We need some new pipes.” Before he’d had time to even dress, Green had contacted friend and fellow theater student Joseph Collins and was on his way to Northridge, along with around 10 others. “I called Jojo...and I pulled up in my 2000 Honda Accord, my PJ’s on, the heat off,” he said. “It’s worse than I thought. There was water everywhere. We had to wring it out, and it wet our hands, and it was so cold. I almost got frostbite that day.” The damages were “ten times worse” than what Green had imagined. “I was just expecting the room to be like a little bit wet, and maybe the clothes and stuff, but the water was shoe-high,” he said. Sophomore Joshua Deck and senior Sabrina Rue re-
REMEMBERING ARIEL
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STRING QUARTETS
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member the scene as “water everywhere.” Like Green, Deck “wasn’t really sure” what to expect. “I didn’t know if it would be standing water or what,” he said. “What ended up happening was that all the clothes were on a big pile out in the lobby. The room itself has a brand-new ceiling.” Recovery efforts continued throughout the day, with more helpers arriving later. Though a few pieces of clothing were salvaged, the “bulk” were “soaked.” “We were wringing them out, and the water looked like Kool-Aid because of all the dyes,” Deck said. What remained of the costume department was inventoried and delivered to the dry cleaner’s, from which the department still awaits an assessment. Students have thrown around a few ideas for possible fundraisers but are still waiting to evaluate the “extent of the damage.”
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Don’t roll the dice and start putting stuff in your body that you don’t know what the implications are. KYLE FERGUSON, PRINCIPAL
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REBECCA HAN EDITOR-IN-CHIEF ORTHRIDGE THEATER STUDENTS had their winter vacations interrupted by an urgent text from director Donna Wright. “Just got a call from Ferguson...the school has flooded,” the text read. “The costume room has standing water. Can you send an SOS to everyone to meet at the school tomorrow around 1:00 and see if we can salvage anything at all?” They arrived at school to that ghastly sight - costumes soaked, sets dripping, and water rising up to their ankles. Pipes above Northridge’s first floor had broken over the holiday break due to single-digit temperatures, resulting in multiple classrooms being flooded. Senior Kameron Green woke up early on the day when he found out about the damage through the students’ GroupMe chat, where the receivers of Wright’s first mes-
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