Bend-La Pine School District is expected to begin an emergency demolition Wednesday after inspectors found a high school auditorium in danger of collapsing.
The district announced Monday it would be immediately and unexpectedly tearing down the Bend High School auditorium due to fractures in the ceiling supports discovered in the last two weeks.
Because of concerns about the building giving way, it has been closed off with cyclone fencing and red tape. The safety concerns mean there won’t be time to investigate the underlying cause of the fractures in the 69-year-old building, according to Bend-La Pine spokesperson Scott Maben.
“We’re not sure exactly what has caused this,” Maben said. “We may not get to the bottom of it before we need to take that building down.”
Bend High’s auditorium has long served as both an education and performing arts hub in central Oregon, hosting high school events, ballet recitals and a regional symphony. District officials were planning to renovate the space until its unstable condition was discovered in the last two weeks. Sprinkler systems caused flooding in the building in previous months and caused a wall to start bowing and cracking. Inspectors then found the cracks in the ceiling support trusses.
Asbestos is a major concern for officials and the crews are working to tear down the building before school starts in September.
Oregon Department of Environmental Quality spokesperson Antony Vorobyov confirmed there is friable asbestos in the auditorium's floor tiles, hard fittings, roofing, windows and different types of caulking. In total, Vorobyov said there are between 10,000 and 25,999 linear feet of asbestos-containing material in the building.
3 Kings Environmental will be working on the demolition and carrying away building materials in large tarps that will line the hauling trucks, crew members at the school site told OPB.
According to the company’s website, they are, “focused on asbestos and hazardous material abatement, remediation, and Good Faith Asbestos Surveys.”
Normally with friable asbestos, the district would have to submit notification of the project to the state and then wait ten days to start work. But, because of the instability of the auditorium, the district requested to begin an emergency project right away, Vorobyov said in an email.
The hazardous material must be removed, collected and disposed of according to specific DEQ requirements, he added by phone.
The demolition will likely cost about $600,000, Maben said, and plans for a new auditorium are nowhere near conception. The Bend-La Pine school district will need to finish the demolition and have the area safe for students to return when school starts in September.