Whiting damage worse than expected

The structural damage that Whiting Field House obtained when it was struck by the hoist boom of a crane is worse that first anticipated.

The hoist, along with a statue of a Washburn football coach Craig Schurig, struck the east wall of Whiting yesterday. People inside the building were evacuated and search and rescue workers are still at work looking for survivors and bodies in the rubble.

At first assessment structural engineers thought the damage to Whiting was moderate and would be able to be fixed in a month. However, after extensive assessment of the building more than three quarters of the east wall has to be rebuilt due to severe cracking in the brick structure and collapse of more than half of the wall. Also, there is damage to nine offices, that was once thought to be only seven. Five of those offices will have to be completely rebuilt.

Damage to the roof of the weight room is the same as first assessed and will have to be repaired before use of the room can resume. The new Whiting Gymnasium will not be in use until the construction of the new wall is complete, which can take up to six months, depending on weather conditions.

As of now, classes will resume on Monday in Petro Allied Health Center and across the rest of campus. Classes that were to be taking place in the Whiting Gymnasium are being moved to Lee Arena, were classes will have to share the gym. All classes located in the 80-seat lecture all will be moved to Henderson 100 and a schedule will be posted no later than Saturday afternoon. Also, all professors and Washburn staff or faculty who have offices located in Whiting, damaged or not, will be moved outside to portable offices that are being brought in.

The suspected cost of the damage is $2.3 million and clean-up has started in correlation with search and rescue workers looking for missing persons. The first area expected to be done is the weight room’s roof and that will be done in two weeks, as it had the least amount of damage.

The assessment was done by constructional and structural engineers at Walker Brothers Construction. For more information, check back here for updates.