Pastor Scott Pevehouse
South Lakewood Baptist Church in Midtown Tulsa suffered major damage as the result of a burst fire suppression line. Burggraf Disaster Restoration rushed to the scene to help them clean up and dry out.
Pastor Scott Pevehouse describes the water disaster, and how Burggraf helped them get back up and running.
“It looked like a muddy river coming down the ceiling. It looked like a monsoon was coming down through the classroom. It was surreal.”
“Burggraf did a phenomenal job. My wife and I have often said, ‘We don’t know how we would be functioning if it weren’t for them.’”
So tell us about yourself and your church.
My name is Scott Pevehouse. I pastor South Lakewood Baptist Church, located at 6108 East 20th Street, which is in Midtown just off of Sheridan. Where we are, we have an opportunity to reach out to all people.
We partner with Edison High School, where one of our big things is cooking for the football team the night before games. We partner with MacArthur Elementary School and with Union Public Schools. We also have an ice cream truck that we turn one of our church vans into, and so we go throughout the town parks and schools, just giving out free ice cream.
You had a water damage emergency not too long ago. What happened?
Around January 15th, we had the freeze.
I was sitting in my office; I heard a noise, and my first thought was kids just playing outside. Neighborhood kids riding their bikes down the church sidewalk, things like that.
Then it dawned on me that it’s freezing outside. It was only one degree that day.
I walked out of my office and there was a stream of water coming down from the drop ceiling. I pushed that up and noticed that there was a lot more. The wood was saturated.
I went upstairs to where our education area is. By that time, the water was flowing down in one classroom. It looked like a muddy river coming down from the insulation and everything that was up in the ceiling. It looked like a monsoon was coming down through the classroom.
It was surreal.
I found the water key, went to find the meters outside in the cold, shut them off, and came back in. But the water was still flowing, and alarms were going off.
When we called the fire department, they said, “Oh, this is a fire suppression system problem. The turn-off valve is in the mechanical closet.” And so we turned it off and it finally stopped flowing.
And then we called Burggraf.
Can you describe how extensive the damage was?
It was pretty much as close to total destruction as you could possibly get.
The thing is, all that water came from upstairs. It took out the carpet and all that. There’s two areas upstairs where all of the ceiling came down.
But then all that water upstairs came downstairs. And so that took out the whole ceiling downstairs, all the drop ceiling.
My office was directly underneath on the first floor where all of it was coming down. I got out with my preaching, my Bible, and my mom’s Bible. Everything else was wet.
There’s some places where the whole wall was taken up, and it was torn down to just the studs.
What were you most concerned about?
I thought,”What are we going to do now?”
Praise God, our sanctuary wasn’t touched. But because the bathrooms were hit, because there’s no alarm system now, and all that, we couldn’t occupy the sanctuary.
So since January, we’ve been in our teen room. We had to move everything.
So my first thoughts were, “What are we going to do? What’s church going to look like?”
My wife, who is our secretary, called our insurance company.
And their first question was, “Well, you have a $35,000 deductible. Do you think you’re going to meet it?” She asked me and I said, “Yeah, tell them we’re definitely meeting it.”
How did you end up connecting with Burggraf?
Several years ago, in our fellowship hall, we had a frozen pipe bust in the ceiling. And Burggraf came out and helped with that. It was smaller job, obviously.
So my wife said, “How about we call Burggraf?”
What was their plan for recovery?
We called and within 45 minutes, Larry had a crew of people already out there.
The first thing they said was, “The first step is we gotta dry this sucker out.”
And so they began that process. The main thing was pulling down the ceiling tiles upstairs. because it was kind of like a minefield: every time one tile got filled, the water weighed it down.
Different Burggraf (managers) came out. And the game plan was put into place.
They brought out the blowers. They brought out the dryers. They called Aspen Electric to run some lights and brought in the generators.
It looked like an army invaded the parking lot, all with blue and orange colors stamped all around.
Tell us a little bit about that first night.
We stayed, I think, till about 9:30, 10:00, just doing whatever we could. We got pizza for the Burggraf workers, so they could go over to the fellowship hall, eat, and then get back to work.
Larry said they stayed till about 2:30 in the morning.
We came back the next morning. By that time, there were piles of bags outside. The ceilings had been pulled down, carpet had been pulled up. The sheetrock had started being cut out, where you could tell it was damaged.
How did things go after that?
Well, in the coming days, I found out my whole office was lost. On my desk was my computer, my iPad, every commentary note that I had for the series of sermons I was preaching right then. All that was lost. I still don’t know how many books for sure. We stopped counting at 300.
I know some of the stuff was salvaged because they packed up all the books they could. Took them back to Burggraf and put them in the warmers or dryers and dried them out as best they could.
I know I had the same questions every day and they patiently answered every time, just so that I could get my mind wrapped around it because I was having to report it to the whole church.
Burggraf did a phenomenal job. My wife and I have often said we don’t know what it would look like and how we would be functioning if it weren’t for them.
Burggraf is Here for You When Disaster Strikes
Burggraf Disaster Restoration has been providing Tulsa area residents with water damage restoration for over three decades. Call us 24/7 for emergency support.