Saco Schools shutdown on Monday after rain causes flooding

Phillips County and many parts of Northern Montana experienced anywhere from 5 to 9 inches of rain this past weekend.

It was a weekend of washed out roads, damaged crops and flooding in homes and buildings.

Saco was hit with 6.5 inches of rainfall in three days, an amount which ultimately was too much for the small town and it's school.

According to the town's Facebook page, the flooding has caused residents to only use their water and sewers in a case of emergency.

"A lot of the town has taken a lot of water and or sewer in their basements, so there were a lot of pumps running most of the night, trying to get that water out," said Kathy Siroky, a secretary at Saco Schools.

With the amount of water that the school was taking on and the shape of some of the classrooms Saco Schools chose not to have school last Monday. Hinsdale Schools were also closed.

Three elementary school rooms had a decent amount of water in them from last weekend's downpours.

But it could've been a lot worse.

Gene Salveson, the Head Maintenance Supervisor and Barry Malone, a science teacher, definitely saved the week.

Salveson and Malone ran pumps as soon as they got the call from Siroky that water had begun to breach the school.

That was on Sunday morning, fast forward to Monday morning, the sump pumps had done their jobs and Salveson had used a Shopvac to extract water from the carpets that will need to be replaced.

The smell of the sitting water required fans to be ran in those classrooms and throughout the school.

A few ceiling tiles were also lost in the flood.

The air intake for the school actually took in water as well, due to the shift in wind, flooding the room, which holds the unit in the schools upper floor.

The air was unaffected thanks to, "a weep-hole in the bottom that keeps it from sucking water into the fans," said Gene Salveson. "Basically it just sat there and kept raining in until there was nowhere for the water to go except down."

Salveson believes that the upper room holding the air intake had it the worst, taking in an inch of rain. The problem was not the depth rather the wide area of wetness.

The school had four submersible sump pumps running for about seven and a half-hours.

"We started at about seven in the morning (Sunday) and had them on and off for most of the day," Salveson said. "We came back up last night at about 10:30 and shut off everything completely."

Though it kept raining, Salveson and Malone had done enough sumping, with the waters across the town starting to go down.

"The water got higher than what the footings are in the elementary wings," Salveson said.

But because they got on the water right away, nothing in the classrooms were damaged, minus carpet and a few ceiling tiles.

"We were lucky in getting stuff moved ahead of time," said Salveson. "There were a few supplies and paper products that got damaged."

It could've been worse.

"Pretty much every yard in town looked like a lake," Salveson said.

If the school had a basement, they could still be pumping out water.

The drainage on the north side of the school filled up and at one point overflowing.

"We've had way worse than this earlier and each time it happens we add more preventative measures," Salveson said.

Salveson and his crew have a few strategically placed sumps, that's saved the school a lot more grief than it could've had.

"We've been working on this for a long time, but some of this you just can't anticipate." he said. A lot more water came down than we thought would come down. My rain gauge only goes to four inches and it overflowed Saturday night."

It's a process the school started five years ago and with last weekends flood, the crew will only add to their plan.

"We can handle four inches in three days, but not five," Salveson said. "So we're going to have to step up some of this stuff, whether it's more drain tiles added in or I don't know."

He went on to say the town doesn't have the capacity to stop that much rain in that amount of time. But for now the Town of Saco carries on.

Saco Schools reopened Tuesday morning.