Official: Cracks in wall were ‘expected’
ROGERSVILLE – The retaining wall at West Greene Elementary Center is developing hairline cracks, but school officials and the design company both said this week those cracks were expected.
Superintendent Thelma Szarell said the district earlier this year noticed vertical cracks near expansion joints in the wall that was built last summer and notified Don Green, project manager with the design company, Michael Baker International of Pittsburgh, about the issue Feb. 25. Green responded to the district four days later informing school officials the cracks were expected and should not be an issue, Szarell said.
“I’m not really concerned about this,” Szarell said. “We had noticed some hairline cracks, and that’s when we sent photographs to them. They said it was to be expected.”
Greg Cerminara, transportation principal for Michael Baker, called the hairline cracks “shrinkage cracks.”
“Concrete cracks,” he said. “That’s what it does no matter what its form. When it hardens, it cracks.”
He said that’s why there is also steel running through the wall to give it structural integrity.
“The wall’s been designed to handle these things with no negative consequences,” he said. “It doesn’t hurt to leave the hairline cracks as they are and that’s commonly what’s done. That’s what it’s designed for.”
Cerminara said while the cracks are probably not a problem, Green will visit the site next week to make sure the cracks are the hairline cracks they anticipated.
Szarell said these cracks are “completely different” than the issue with the previous retaining wall, which collapsed in November 2014 and was removed.
The board hired a different contractor last April, Burchick Construction, to build the new wall at a guaranteed maximum price of $5.26 million.
Greene County Bureau Chief Mike Jones contributed to this report.