COLORADO SPRINGS — The Colorado Springs Fire Department (CSFD) notified Colorado Springs School District 11 of structural concerns at Jenkins Middle School just before the holidays in December.
In a letter obtained through an open records request by News5Investigates, CSFD told the district it had 30 days “or as quickly as practical”, with the Fire Marshal’s approval to hire one of three engineering firms to perform a structural analysis.
CSFD said the goals of this analysis should be to evaluate the structural components of the building to determine any immediate life safety concerns, a fire protection analysis, and the impact on building utilities.
The letter also included several photos detailing the damage at Jenkins Middle School. The damage included cracked walls and separations of walls and floors.
You can read the full letter CSFD sent to Colorado Springs School District 11 by clicking here or by reading below:
“This is terrible,” Bob Pollack said, the owner of Black Rock Inspections, a company based in Lakewood. Pollack has 50 years of experience in construction, welding, and more than three decades inspecting buildings, “to quote [the document provided by News5] this is very unsafe.”
“This is very obvious that the foundation is moving,” Pollack said in reference to a photo in the report.
“The first thing you do before you build a building is you dig a hole,” Pollack said and after taking dirt out, “you put it back and you compact it with a certain amount of moisture water in it, which the water makes it like, lubricates all the sand particles and then you have to compact it.”
Pollack said after that process, typically construction workers build a foundation on top of that called subgrade.
“If your subgrade is not right, step one your foundation is not going to work and that’s what happens here,” Pollack said.
According to Pollack, repairs for the problems could take months.
“You have a problem, now you have to start. You have to find—where does this end? How far does this go? How far apart are these? Is this all in one hall, or [fire investigators] said it’s over in one corner of the building? So, you’ve got to keep investigating till you get to an end, to a spot,” Pollack said.
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