MISSOULA – Missoula’s homeless shelter on the verge of reopening their men’s dorm Friday after it suffered a sewage spill on May 8, suffered another devastating setback.
Poverello Center officials say they will not be able to reopen the dorm, after experiencing a second sewage flood.
The second flood impacted the same location in the building, destroying all the work that been completed there.
“Over the past eight weeks, we have worked closely with building and plumbing experts to investigate why we experienced the plumbing failure that happened in May,” Poverello Center Executive Director Amy Allison Thompson.
“As a group, we had thought we had figured out the issue and had a plan to make sure this issue would not happen again. Clearly, an issue persists,” she added.
Poverello Center clients have been cleared from the building and remediation specialists are on site beginning to clean up the situation.
Thompson: “It is clear that our initial investigation did not identify all the issues our plumbing system is facing. We are again working with experts in the field to continue to find out what has happened and to have a more comprehensive plan for fixing this problem”.
The Pov’s kitchen also remains closed. They typically serve 400 to 600 clients a day.
The Missoula Food Bank has provided ready to eat meals to feed its clients over the weekend. Pov officials ask that people do not bring food donations as they don’t have a place to store them.
“We appreciate the support we have gotten and we will be needing to go back to our supporters to help us recover from this second disaster,” Thompson told MTN News.
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