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NEWS
| November 4, 2003
Facilities
Damage assessment may take a week
Officials say fire-related costs
keep coming in, including $1M to replace the electricity hub.
By Brad
Rollins
The Shorthorn managing editor
Efforts to square the conflicting accounts of the Oct. 24 Central
Utilities Plant fire are awaiting a damage assessment that may not
be ready for another week.
“There’s a lot of discussion still ongoing and probably
will be ongoing until a total estimation is completed,” said
John Hall, interim vice president for administration and campus
operations. “I don’t think there’s going to be
a final reconciliation until we see how much it is all going to
cost.”
Two subcontractors were preparing the plant for demolition when
the fire started. Adjustors from each company’s insurance
carrier have been at the site several times over the past week,
but an agreement between the two is not expected until the cost
estimation is complete.
“Obviously, anyone is reluctant to accept liability before
we know how much it will cost,” Hall said.
It is not clear how closely the insurance adjustors’ probes
parallel the official inquiry being conducted by university Fire
Marshal Shufford Parr. A representative from the fire marshal’s
office was seen last week at the site during a meeting among insurance
carrier representatives and university Physical Plant Director Jeff
Johnson.
Hall and Johnson said they cannot speak for the fire marshal, and
Parr has not responded to calls for comment.
A spokesperson for general contractor Jamail Construction has not
responded to press inquiries, and company representatives at the
site defer questions to the university.
Meanwhile, bills for fire-related costs continue to trickle in,
Hall said, making even a generalized estimation impossible.
Replacing the switch gears that serve as the hub of campus electricity
will likely cost more than $1 million, more than half of which is
for labor, he said. The campus lost electricity after the fire,
and the patchwork grid assembled in the days that followed has been
described as a temporary fix.
The new Chemistry and Physics Building to be built over the plant’s
footprint was to house the switch gears, but Hall said he will meet
with engineers today to discuss the feasibility of moving the hub.
In any case, the switch gears are a fraction of the fire’s
total price tag that includes rental of generators to power residence
halls, temporary replacement switch gears and the cleanup of smoke
damage in the nearby University Center and College Hall. There will
also presumably be hundreds of overtime labor hours, including Physical
Plant workers who cobbled together the temporary grid and police
officers who worked 12-hour shifts securing the fire site and patrolling
the darkened campus.
But because the building was marked to be demolished, the university
only stands to recover the cost of the destroyed electrical switch
gears and costs related to cleaning up from the fire.
“In all likelihood, we’re looking at the cost of the
equipment and actual expenses incurred in the week after the fire,”
Hall said. “The building itself had no value to us except
for the equipment we would have continued to use.”
Science Dean Neal Smatresk said he would submit estimates of how
the power outage affected research by today. He said the impact
was relatively minor but declined to discuss amounts. A similar
damage assessment is expected from the College of Engineering.
“We’re certainly talking about modest losses,”
Dr. Smatresk said. “It’s not been catastrophic.”
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