It’s been more than a year since the hail storm that wreaked havoc across Midland and Odessa, and Ector County is still paying for it.
Ector County Commissioners approved a bid recently with Vantage USAA Inc. to repair roofs damaged by the storm last year, with a bottom line price of about $6.2 million, County Purchasing Agent Kenneth Lind said.
“There’s like 55 buildings, so there’s a lot of roofs,” Lind said.
The 55 buildings, Lind said, are scattered across the county and not in one particular spot. Thanks to the lack of rain this season, there hasn’t been as much leaking, but there are still holes in many of the county buildings’ roofs.
It has taken more than a year for repair work to get off the ground due to negotiating with insurance, as well as hiring an outside architect and consultants to walk the roofs and look at the damage.
Lind said the deductible from the county’s insurance would be about $4 million, about two-thirds of the total cost of the project, but the county is still negotiating, and would like insurance to cover the entire project.
The repairs are scheduled to begin in about two months, Lind said, while the county still negotiates over insurance costs. They won’t have to wait for negotiations to end though, as Lind said they have some money saved to begin the repairs.
This is just the first phase of the repairs as well, Lind said there would be a second phase involving the repair of asphalt roofs damaged during the storm, of which there were about six that need repair. Lind said he was unsure as of yet as to when the next phase would begin or how long the first phase would take.
The storm last year brought down hail the size of baseballs and golf balls and wind speeds reaching up to 70 mph, and caused an estimated $480 million worth of damage, the most expensive hailstorm in Texas that year.
