HVAC Failure Led To Warming Center Closure

EASTHAM – An HVAC failure is believed to have caused the shuttering of Nauset Regional High School as an area warming center during February’s blizzard. 

 That was the update to the Nauset regional school committee March 4 from Bob Capurso, the district’s facilities manager.

 The high school opened Feb. 23 to residents in need of a place to warm up and charge devices. But Capurso said a problem with the heating system forced the school to close Tuesday, leaving residents in need of shelter to be transported by police and fire officials to Dennis-Yarmouth Regional High School instead.

 Capurso said the HVAC controls on the school’s heating system were not set to operate on emergency power.

 “It’s almost the equivalent of if your boiler was powered in your house, but the thermostat didn’t have power. So it wasn’t telling it to kick on,” he told the regional school committee. 

 Upon learning of the failure at the high school, emergency personnel quickly pivoted to help provide residents transport to Dennis-Yarmouth Regional High School and Cape Cod Regional Technical High School in Harwich as needed. The blizzard caused extensive outages for much of the Lower and Outer Cape for multiple days.

 Orleans Fire Chief Geof Deering said Barnstable County has a regional sheltering program that identifies areas for use as warming shelters during storms. In addition to Nauset, D-Y and Cape Tech, those also include Barnstable, Falmouth and Sandwich high schools.

 “The challenge was just getting people to the high school in D-Y, just time and distance wise,” Deering said.

 Local police and fire departments got some additional transport assistance from the Cape Cod Regional Transit Authority, which provided “large scale” transportation of residents from Nauset to D-Y, Deering said. The regional agency also helped with taking residents home, he added.

 Capurso said Nauset High’s heating system was eventually serviced to override the school’s boiler, allowing hot water to flow through the building, but the system was unable to push hot air through the school. The system was back up and operational by Feb. 25, he said.

 “The architect and the electrical engineer, they’re doing a deep dive into how was this missed, and what else could have been missed,” he said.

 A report on the failure was due to be delivered to the district March 5, Capurso said. Beyond that, he recommended that a test of the system be administered to ensure that the system is ready to properly perform in case of future storms or emergencies.

 “I think we should do a dry run, make sure everything is working and reestablish confidence that we will be ready for the next time,” he said.