Bradley County Courthouse Fire- Cleveland, TN

1/17/2019 (Permalink)

On September 30^th, 2017, a fire broke out in the mechanical room of the Bradley County Courthouse. Luckily, it occurred on a Saturday when the building was empty. The firefighters arrived on scene within minutes to extinguish the fire. While the fire was contained in one room, that particular room housed the HVAC system that filtered through the entire building. As you can imagine, the HVAC unit spread smoke and soot through nearly every vent in the building. There was minimal fire damage and very little water damage, but the soot coated walls, floors, furniture, and the air conditioning system.

SERVPRO of Bradley County called out to the scene

SERVPRO of Bradley County was called to the scene to assess the damage. We began fire restoration immediately to clean the smoke and soot damage. After the cleaning was complete, our Reconstruction team began construction on the 55-year-old building. The HVAC system had to be replaced along with the ventilation system, as well as new drop ceilings, lighting, and plumbing.

Running into unseen obstacles

I spoke with Dan, our Reconstruction Project Manager, on the timeline of this project. He explained that when inspectors came to approve the building post remediation, they found that many of the old building’s features were no longer up to code, thus creating a long list for our Reconstruction team that would take several months to complete.

• They had to install a sprinkler system because the building was not originally built with one.
• They had to change 70% of the doors in order to meet ADA requirements.
• They had to install a brand new security system they required rewiring in the building.

Needless to say, the 1964 Courthouse required quite a facelift!

 A Successful End Product

Dan is proud to say that the Bradley County Courthouse is now an old shell of a building complete state-of-the-art equipment, high-tech security systems, and much needed updates. The employees have moved back in and the Courthouse is officially back in business. “I’m proud of the final product- we started with an old, outdated building and turned it into a modern facility.”