Ice Dams Cause Flooding, Closing Orchard Farms School Today

Students at Orchard Farms Elementary School in Cranston got another day off from school Monday after flooding caused by ice dams on the roof caused water to spill into several classrooms over the weekend.

Superintendent Judith Lundsten said in an interview that she didn’t feel comfortable sending children to the school today after getting a look at the damage over the weekend.

Crews from Clean Care, along with school staff, are busy cleaning up broken roof tiles, water-logged insulation and making lists of what was damaged after water made its way through the ceiling and walls, Lundsten said.

Lundsten said she got a phone call at around lunch time for a report of water leaking through the ceiling. It wasn’t long before she and her husband and others were spending Sunday afternoon covering teacher supplies and classroom items with plastic bags in an effort to prevent even more damage.

“We covered stuff with tarps, equipment, teachers’ materials,” Lundsten said. ”Teachers rely on those materials so we wanted to be respectful of that.”

The building is safe, but the not-so-clean state of the building Sunday night led Lundsten to call for the cancellation on Monday, she said, and she wanted to thank families for their boundless understanding and patience.

“I know it disrupts parents who have to deal with day care” and other issues, the superintendent said.

In some classrooms, the water had dripped through the ceiling, soaking insulation and ceiling tiles. In some places, the ceiling tiles expanded and broke apart, falling down into the classroom below.

Lundsten said the district will be filing an insurance claim to cover the cost of the damage.

Lundsten said that crews have been monitoring the roof for more than three weeks and had been removing snow but “the ice dams were like I’ve never seen before.”

The school should be open for students tomorrow.