One month after the Jan. 22 floods, staff and students at Bancroft Elementary School in Spring Valley are just now getting ready to go to campus.
Floodwaters created, quite literally, a river through the campus last month. Since then, it's been an around-the-clock effort to clean up and repair damaged areas of the school, coming in at a cost in the seven figures, according to Robert Cochran, executive director of business services at La Mesa-Spring Valley Schools.
Jan. 22 was anticipated to be a rainy day at school, but the rain became heavy and flooding started to overwhelm the hallways and then classrooms.
San Diego's historic flooding, one month later:
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Third-grade teacher Allyson Peffers was one of several staff members who acted quickly to help students get out safely when she was in the middle of a language arts lesson.
”Not five minutes after that, the kids are screaming from the back, ‘There’s water in the classroom.’" Peffers said. "OK, grab your backpacks. Run to the auditorium.”
So, they did.
"Our hallway got flooded the most, so that day when we had to evacuate, we were wading through ankle-deep water," Peffers said.
Cochran said students waited in the auditorium.
"We sent school buses here, enough to pick up every student from the campus," Cochran said.
Peffers reflects on that day and how scary it was for students, many of whom live in the community where they go to school.
"Kids were really hurt by the event. They didn’t know what was happening at home. A lot of the families were affected because they live around here, not just that they wanted to make sure their parents were OK," Peffers said. "A lot of that day was making sure the kids felt safe and loved even though we didn’t know what the future might be.”
Looking back on that day, Cochran credits the teachers and staff like Peffers who helped the students in a fast-acting way. He also says that had contractors not jumped in immediately after the floods to run fans and dehumidifiers to dry out classrooms, the damage could've been worse.
"The early work that we did with that is what saved us from having to do exhaustive mitigative work in the walls," Cochran said.
However, there was still extensive damage. All the floors across campus had to be replaced, air filters were changed and infrastructure changes were also done to prevent flooding like this event from happening again.
"A big focus has been how do we make the facilities safe, and the fact that things have come down the mountain and that was really unpredictable, so we’ve worked very closely with our industrial hygienist determining do we need to cut into walls and replace them to remove carpet and replace them," Cochran said.
Cochran says the industrial hygienist did not find mold growth in the walls of the classrooms. Looking ahead, he says there's still more work to be done.
"We have some construction work that will address water runoff and the way that water runs off," Cochran said. "We’ve done a significant amount of work addressing issues with county storm drains you know are not necessarily ours to maintain but we all play a part in making sure they drain, but at the same time I’m aware through some talks that I’m having with the county as well to strengthen infrastructure on their end as well.”
In the meantime, school has been in session at a neighboring campus. While returning to their classrooms is exciting, this anticipated first day back does come with some weight.
’’I’m just going to tell you, it’s hard," Cochran said. "We’re doing everything on our end to support the experience, strengthen the experience of them moving back in, but it’s going to be hard.’’
Students and staff will return to Bancroft Elementary School on Monday morning.
