A broken hose in a toilet has caused severe damage in one Carbon County building.

On Thursday, the commissioners provided an update on the issue in the administration building that happened on Tuesday. A toilet located on the third floor of the building caused a water issue that leaked through the floors into several offices below. The board was waiting on the insurance adjuster to determine just how much damage was caused. No estimate has been determined on the cost or the time needed to repair the damage.

Offices that were directly affected include information technology, the controller, GIS/Mapping, tax claim and tax assessment. In these offices, water seeped through the ceiling, causing water damage and ceiling tiles to fall, as well as carpeting to become saturated. These offices have been closed the last few days as a result of the damage.

Commissioner Rocky Ahner said if it wasn’t for a smoke detector going off in a second floor employee break room to alert officials of a problem, the damage could have been a lot worse.

He said that he wanted the adjuster to look at everything in the building to see what damage was behind the walls and in the ceilings that couldn’t be seen.

In one office, evidence of water being on a table was evident as papers were crumpled from being wet, yet above the table, the ceiling tiles looked untouched.

Ahner said this is one example where a mold problem could form in another area that looked fine but really had been affected.

Commissioners’ Chairman Wayne Nothstein said that thankfully this didn’t happen a few days earlier because the county had just printed 45,000 tax bills, which would have been an added cost if they had gotten ruined and needed to be reprinted.

The building was in the process of being dried out, with dozens of fans and dehumidifiers being placed around the building by Servpro, a company that specializes in water cleanup.

The commissioners are now working to determine a plan on how to reopen the offices in the administration building while repairs are completed. These departments cannot have long downtimes due to the business that they handle.

In other administration building matters, the commissioners announced that the staging equipment for the HVAC and roof project has been brought in and work is expected to begin next week. Scaffolding can be seen at the entrance to the building off Hazard Square.

Repairs to the elevator in the building, which also has been out of service since October, is also expected to begin next week. The contract for this project expires at the end of the month.