CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Kanawha County schools maintenance crews will likely be busy the rest of the week fixing problems caused by this week’s extreme cold temperatures.
Director of Maintenance Terry Hollandsworth said the problems began Tuesday when temperatures below zero caused water lines to break in various schools. There was no school Tuesday and that allowed workers to find the breaks and repair them.
Problems with heating popped up in several schools Wednesday morning as students, faculty and staff returned on a 2-hour delay schedule.
Hollandsworth said the repair work would continue until things are back to normal.
“We’ve got crews out working our way through the schools. I don’t see anything that’s really critical at this time but we do have some problems here and there,” he said.
Glasgow resident Leslie Kennan didn’t want to send her kids to Cedar Grove Community School where there was a heating problem in part of the building Wednesday.
“It’s freezing outside and they canceled school for two days because of frigid temperatures and they expect us to send our kids to school with 11 schools that have no heat or partially no heat,” Keenan said.
Hollandsworth said when you consider how many school buildings there are in Kanawha County it can be a daunting task when frigid temperatures take their toll.
“We have 71, 72 schools and they are spread over 900 square miles. We have four million square feet of floor space and some them date back to the 1930s,” Hollandsworth said.