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Power outage causes meltdown at ice rink
(by Sue Reid - October 01, 2008)
Power outage causes meltdown at ice rink
By SUE REID
While much of Auburn Township lost power in the windstorm of Sept. 14, leaving residents without water from their wells, one area business had more water than it wanted.
The Pond ice rink on Washington Street lost power just like everyone else, General Manager Mark Gerberich said. Unexpectedly, it also lost the ice on its 15,000-square-foot rink, he said. "Obviously, our situation is not as dire as people not having energy and losing food, but, after two days of no power, we lost our ice."
While the rink has lost power in the past, this was the first time the ice completely melted, Mr. Gerberich said.
"When we lost power, we didn't think this would happen," he said. "We've seen it before. The storm didn't seem that bad. It was windy, and there were some trees down, but, in the overall scheme, there wasn't the thunder, lightning or flooding like you see down South. Not until you woke up the next morning did you realize Ohio had so many people without power."
The Pond closed the evening of Sept. 14 and reopened Sept. 22 with the ice rink back to normal. Getting to that point, though, involved an extremely tedious process, Mr. Gerberich said.
First, all of the ice and slush had to be removed from the 80-by-180-foot rink, he said. "It's not just taking water out. There's paint there too."
Drying out the rink was a team effort, he said, with Pond staff and the Chagrin Valley Figure Skating Club lending a hand. They even borrowed a Bob Cat from a neighboring business, he said.
"You need it to be totally dry," Mr. Gerberich said of the rink.
Once the power was back two days later, the temperature had to be brought down slowly, he said. There are coils that run underneath the ice, he said. "Once you do that, you can freeze the cement. That is done by misting it," he said. "It's a very educational process, because then you mist the cement in six times."
Then, once the rink is painted white, that has to be frozen in, he said. "We do that by using the misting machine again, over and over and over." Once that was frozen in, the hockey lines were put on the ice, he said, which also was frozen in.
"It's just a long process," Mr. Gerberich said, and it took until late that Friday afternoon, Sept. 19.
At that point, Mr. Gerberich said, the ice has to be continually built up to an inch and a half. "We're not even there yet," he said last week. "You have to put it on a little bit at a time."
The up side is that "we now have great ice. The arena looks beautiful," he said.
Mr. Gerberich said Gilmour Academy, which has its own ice rinks, helped the Pond in putting the ice in. "We could do the hard work," he said, "but we needed someone to lead the process."
The Pond's customers "were really patient," he said. "We had people drop in every day and see what was going on. Our customers were patient and put up with an inconvenient situation."
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