County officials assessing water damage
TEXARKANA, Ark. — What initially started as a water pipe leak earlier in the week, eventually became the Niagara Falls of water problems Saturday morning for the Miller County Courthouse.
Sharon Wright, a receptionist for the County Judge’s Office, dropped by the courthouse about 9 a.m., when she notice water all along the floor upon entering the courthouse basement.
“When I went up to where my office was on the first floor, I noticed water pouring out of the ceiling light fixtures in the first floor hallways” she said.
After alerting other county officials to the soggy circumstance, Wright and other county personnel discovered water pipes burst in the courthouse’s fifth floor former jail area. These bursts had been leaking water from the building’s very top floor, down to the basement, perhaps as early as late Friday night.
“There was about six inches of water standing on the fifth floor when we go up there to see where the water was coming from,” Wright said.
She added that authorities, by about mid-morning Saturday, traced the leakage to two water spigots with ruptured pipes on the fifth floor.
“Water seemed to be coming out of walls and ceilings like a waterfalls,” she said.
Wright went on to say the water leaks pose some damage danger to paperwork file cabinets the reception office’s immediate work area.
Beyond water leaking in the County Judge’s reception area, at least half the other county offices on the first floor experience some water damage.
Miller County Clerk Staphanie Harvin said a storage room in her office area had water damage.
County Treasurer Teresa Reed said her office doesn’t appear to have water damage.
As of early Saturday afternoon, no one at the Miller County Tax Assessors Office or a Tax Collectors Office could be reach for comment regarding damage assessment.
County Judge Cathy H.Harrison said that both the second and third floors (which contain the courthouse’s courtrooms, jury deliberation rooms and judicial offices) receive some of the most severe damage.
Harrison said the courthouse, which had been initially closed last week (owing to the winter storm), said the building initially had a pipe leak Tuesday evening, Feb. 16.
“That Tuesday, one of the employees came to the courthouse, to get something out of their office to work on,” she said. “That was when the first leak from a busted water pipe, on the second floor, got notice. At that time I called our maintenance department to have the courthouse’s water system shut off that Tuesday evening.”
Once county maintenance crews conducted some initial repairs to the ruptured pipes, the building’s water system continued to be shut down until county officials had the system turned back on Friday evening because the courthouse needed to be back open for public business Monday.
Miller County Budget and Finance Committee Chairman Ernest Pender said the county has insurance, but has no idea how costly the water damage will be.
The Miller County courthouse, located at 400 Laurel St., was erected in 1939 under the auspices of the Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works. It is art deco in style — though restrained — designed by architect E.C. Seibert. It is a four-story, cut stone and cast concrete masonry courthouse building, popular with federal public works projects of the time.
According to a Dec. 5, 2018, article in the Texarkana Gazette, original interior decorations included marble floors, simple molded entry ways, ceiling molding and courtroom furniture.
An earlier courthouse was built about 1888. It served Miller County for 50 years before being condemned as unfit.
Officials said Saturday it is very likely a good portion of county business will have to be conducted somewhere else in the coming months.
It is a strange twist — and most certainly unrelated — that this is happening at a time when courthouse officials were preparing to have its roofs repaired through a historical grant from the state.
Roughly $270,000 was earmarked this year t0 refurbish the first floor roof and fifth floor roof (the building’s top floor roof covering the old Miller County jail).
Last year, the courthouse’s third floor roof was refurbished with about $220,000 in grant funds.
In a interview with the Gazette in late January, Harrison said work on this phase of the roofing project would be largely contingent on the weather.
No one then could have anticipated what was to happen below the courthouse’s famous roof line and inside its distinctive outline on Saturday.