Everything was moved into the council chambers. Everything.
What was once the chamber where council members deliberated on legislation had been hastily usurped by office supplies, desks, chairs, file folders and phone cables.
On the day when LINK nky saw the repurposed chamber, the power had gone out, draping the room in shadow. Chelsea Cox, the deputy clerk, and Rachyl Gibson, the city’s new finance director, were barely visible behind computer monitors in a corner. Chris Moriconi, Independence’s city administrator, stood in the sunlight by the glass entrance doors.
“We’re making do,” Cox said.
Such is the state of the Independence city building. Over the holidays, pipes in the ceiling froze and burst, flooding many of the offices and forcing the staff to relocate into the parts of the building that didn’t take damage.
The administration offices were the hardest hit with the council chambers and the police offices left intact. The city council itself moved its meetings to the nearby county courthouse. Moriconi estimates the damage to be at least half a million dollars, and that’s with repairs still underway.
“I was up here with the fire department on Christmas Day walking around in several inches of water,” Moriconi said.
The freeze that led to the pipe rupture began under the veil of 2022’s historic blizzard. On the night of Dec. 22 and into the morning of Dec. 23, temperatures dropped a record 52 degrees, according to the National Weather Service. This led to a power outage in the early morning, which shut down the building’s boiler, depriving the structure of heat.
Moriconi recounted that the boiler wouldn’t restart right away, so the staff was forced to improvise. They put their coats on and brought in heaters to warm the place up, returning the building to a temperature of about 60 degrees.
“We can all work with jackets on in 60 degree weather,” Moriconi said.
But that wasn’t the end. When the staff adjourned for the break on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, what heat lingered in the building failed to penetrate the insulated tiles of the dropped ceiling.
In the absence of a centralized heating system and with the added heat trapped below by the ceiling tiles, the pipes in the ceiling froze. Finally, an emergency sprinkler head in the administrative offices ruptured, flooding the building for several hours.
“Ground zero was in the city clerk’s office,” Moriconi said, indicating the spout in the ceiling where the rupture happened.
As Moriconi gave a tour of the building, workers assigned to make repairs persisted in their work, despite the power outage, its attendant shadows gloomy reminders of the days leading up to the leak.
The water from the sprinkler ran down the wall of the clerk’s office and began inundating the hallway, where the water eventually spilled out into the other offices. The carpet and furniture were destroyed, and the water seeped up into the dry wall, either ruining it or, at the very least, creating the ideal environment for mold blooms.
“We spent a week airing it out with dehumidifiers,” Moriconi said, “making sure it was completely dried out.”
Luckily, insurance has covered the repairs and the city is in the process of replacing the office furniture and carpet. Moriconi predicts the work to be completed by April.
“I would say by April 1, you wouldn’t know anything happened.”
The city of Independence administrative services are still operating. Visit their website for more information.
