FAIRMONT — Maintenance workers for Marion County Schools pumped more than 300 gallons of water from Monongah Elementary after Sunday’s sudden deluge of rain and flash floods.
“Monongah was the school that probably got hit the hardest,” Superintendent Donna Heston said.
Four other buildings in the district — Monongah Middle, Barrackville Elementary/Middle, East Park Elementary and East Fairmont High — also sustained damage to varying degrees from the rainy onslaught.
Addressing leaky roofs and vacuuming soaked carpets have been the orders of the day during the cleanup, the superintendent said.
In Monongah Elementary’s library, water could be spied seeping out from under bookshelves.
The rains arrived quickly after the purple clouds layered in. As much as three inches of precipitation was dumped on the county in about 30 minutes during the fast-moving storm.
Before Sunday, there wasn’t necessarily a state of emergency in Marion’s school district — just a sense of urgency, Heston said.
Marion County Schools had already taken a district-wide DIY project, as it were, launching work this summer to tack on Safe Schools entrances at Barrackville and Rivesville schools, along with East Fairmont Middle – plus the elementary schools of White Hall, Blackshere and Pleasant Valley.
The district is in the process of prioritizing a new roof for East Fairmont High, which did leak during Sunday’s storm – and often does during other periods of heavy rain and snow.
That roof is the original covering for the 32-year-old high school.
