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Water-pipe break in Wean Building soaks Trumbull County records
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
Some of the Trumbull County records kept on three floors of the county-owned Wean Building on North Park Avenue got wet during a break in a 4-inch water pipe on the fourth floor.
The break Sunday night triggered a fire alarm, which brought Warren firefighters to the building. The problem wasn’t caused by freezing, said Commissioner Mauro Cantalamessa. “It is an old building, and this is what happens with old buildings,” he said.
Ironically, some of the same records that got wet Sunday also got soaked in July 2013, when water backed up into the basement of the county-owned Stone Building at the corner of North Park and High Street and into the basement of the Wean Building.
That water resulted from a hard rain that also filled up the basements of several other downtown buildings.
After the storm, the county purchased the former First Place Bank building on East Market Street to house county records and several county offices.
The county’s Planning Commission and Building Inspection Department moved into the new building in recent months, and the county’s Records Center staff has been moving records into it for close to a year. Sunday’s accident will speed up the process, Commissioner Frank Fuda said Monday.
Fuda and Cantalamessa said it’s not clear yet how much damage the water did, but some criminal files from the prosecutor’s office and some of the oversized books from the Trumbull County Probate Court will have to be freeze-dried to remove the moisture.
Only a few employees of the probate court have been working in the Wean Building in recent months. All other county workers have moved to new quarters, such as the planning commission and building inspection department.
The county has applied for a grant through the Western Reserve Port Authority to help with the cost of demolishing the building.
Probate Judge Thomas A. Swift said the water didn’t damage any probate records, but freeze-drying will be needed to get the moisture out of the covers of some of the record books. That is the same process used after the July 2013 floods.
Swift said the county eventually will have space on the third floor of the Stone Building for the probate records, as soon as the Child Support Enforcement Agency moves from that space into the First Place Bank building.
Diana Marchese, county recorder, said most of her records already are in the First Place building, but the county will move the rest of the records from the Wean Building to the First Place building as soon as possible to protect them, even though the First Place building isn’t ready for them to go there permanently.