Burst sprinklers flood Liberty Lake City Hall

Water was flowing through Liberty Lake last weekend, but not where one might expect.

Hundreds of gallons flooded Liberty Lake’s City Hall on Saturday, cutting short the three-day weekend for city administrators.

Workers have since transformed the building into a construction site. Carpet is ripped up from the floor in some rooms, and the walls are stripped down to their frames in the mayor’s office. Even the City Council chambers are half-closed.

It could have been worse.

“We were lucky it was caught pretty quickly,” said Police Chief Brian Asmus, who came to City Hall on Saturday and moved as many boxes out of the water as he could.

Plastic fire sprinkler pipes in the ceiling froze and burst during the weekend cold snap, sending water pouring down through a hole above Mayor Steve Peterson’s desk, said Arlene Fisher, city finance and administration director. An off-duty police officer was stopping in Saturday when he saw the damage in progress.

He called Asmus, who came in time to see parts of the building under a few inches of cold water. He turned the building’s water and power off to halt the damage.

The flooding mostly affected one wing that holds police files and equipment storage. The water stopped just short of entering evidence lockers.

Insurance is covering the costs, but nobody knows how long the repairs are going to take, Fisher said.

The damage is forcing a change of venue for meeting rooms.

Instead of the regular city council chambers, bordering the edge of Trailhead Golf Course and complete with fireplace, back porch and barbecue, the council met Tuesday in the basement of the city-owned Trailhead clubhouse, with dim lighting, faux-wood paneling and a Corona beer advertisement on the wall.

And the mayor’s office, currently cold and stripped bare, will move to a smaller office in another wing of the building, Fisher said. Peterson is on vacation until the end of the month and has been told about the damage, she said.

The building, constructed in 2001, was designed to be an Alzheimer’s care facility. The facility never opened, and the city bought it in 2004, renovated large parts, and then moved City Hall to the building later that year.

“It’s kind of disheartening,” Fisher said. “We watched it take shape and moved in, and now it’s under construction again.”

City functions are still going along normally, with a few adjustments, Fisher said.

The Police Department’s equipment room was damaged, so now files, cameras and even bicycles are stuffed into dry areas while renovation work continues, Asmus said.

“It’s more of an inconvenience to work around the construction,” he said. “It hasn’t affected operations other than being inconvenient.”