By Jennifer Edwards
The Cincinnati Enquirer

SUMMIT PRAYER SERVICE TODAY

MONTGOMERY - The public is invited to join Summit Country Day School students, parents, faculty and alumni at a prayer service 9:30 a.m. today at Good Shepherd Church, 8815 Kemper Road. The Rev. Philip Seher, the school's chaplain, will lead the service. Summit students will provide music. Joseph Devlin, head of school, and Mark Bodnar, chairman of the school's board of trustees, will update parents on the return to classes.

HYDE PARK - The consultant hired by Summit Country Day School to determine the cause of Sunday's partial collapse of its main building said Friday that he expects to know that answer by Feb. 6. Donald Meinheit, senior consultant for Wiss Janney Elstner Associates Inc. of Chicago, said he and other engineers will take the debris pile apart, examine it, photograph it and stage scenarios until one matches the data. They also plan to review construction plans, notes, engineering studies and more.

"Two weeks from today we should have a pretty firm opinion," Meinheit said Friday in a phone interview from Chicago. Officials with the company, which helped stabilize the World Trade Center after the 1993 bombings, will write a report summing up their assessment and hand it over to Summit.

Summit spokeswoman Jennifer Pierson said late Friday the school would turn a copy of the report over to Cincinnati's department of buildings and inspections.

"I am sure the city is as eager to see what the experts have to say about this as we are," she said.

No one was injured because the 1,100-student school was not in session when the collapse happened.

Meinheit would not comment Friday on a preliminary assessment that Cincinnati's top building official, Bill Langevin, has made for the cause of the collapse, which left the fourth story buckled and roof suspended.

Langevin has said excavation for an adjacent project was too close and too deep in relation to the existing foundation. Excavation shouldn't have gone on until the building's foundation was shored up, he said.

In addition, he said, bad weather and a previously undetected difference in the depth of foundations of the portion of the building that collapsed likely contributed.

A February 2003 pre-construction report prepared for Summit warned that the old foundation should be strengthened.

The contractor, Turner Construction, Co. of Cincinnati, did not return a call for comment Friday. Turner officials have repeatedly referred questions to Summit, at the school's request.

Kip Ping, president of Pinnacle Engineering Inc., in Blue Ash, said the real story may not come out until "subpoenas start to fly."

"It is very easy for everyone to point the finger at someone else and to come to a fast and easy conclusion that may seem very reasonable and logical but that doesn't necessarily mean it's the entire story," he said.

Meinheit did agree with Langevin's assessment that the main building is structurally sound because it is on a different foundation than the portion that fell. That portion, about 30-to 45-feet wide in the east wing, had been modified from its original construction, both say.

Demolition of the fourth floor, which has buckled further since Sunday's collapse, and the suspended roof, should begin today.

Removal must be gingerly done as efforts are made to preserve the remaining structure and not damage it or other buildings, such as the historic chapel, Meinheit and Langevin said.

Pierson said Friday that the school is insured for the estimated millions of dollars in damage the collapse caused. School officials expect that will help them pay rent on off-site classroom facilities.

Most classes to resume

It remained uncertain late Friday where Summit's 317 high school students will go when they resume classes Tuesday, Pierson said. One option Summit officials are considering is Xavier University; the location could be announced at today's 9:30 a.m. prayer service at Good Shepherd Catholic Church on Kemper Road in Montgomery.

Hundreds of Summit preschool and kindergarten students will finish the school year, beginning Wednesday, at Crossroads Community Church in Oakley because of damage to the main building.

The rest of Summit, its first through eighth grades, will return to campus Wednesday.

•  Grades 1 and 2 will go back to their classes at Holmes Hall (a renovated gym separate from the main building), and grades 4 through 8 (310 students) will return to the Harold C. Schott Middle School building. That structure also is separate.

•  But third grade, which had classes in the main building, will use portable classrooms being brought to the campus. There are 206 primary students and 248 Montessori students, according to the school.While the majority of parents have said they have full confidence in Summit's board, they want to know what caused the collapse.

"So who wasn't minding the store?" asked Frank Albi of Anderson Township, who has two children, 11, and 16, at Summit and a 21-year-old son who graduated.

"At the end of the day we are going to want to know, was it the city inspectors who weren't keeping tabs on the project? Or, was it someone, the construction company, that wasn't paying attention to what they were doing?" he asked.

Informational meetings for parents and students will be held three times Monday in Summit's Kyte Theatre on the campus: noon, 3 p.m. and 6 p.m.

Montessori parents will have a reception Wednesday at Crossroads at 8:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m.

E mail jedwards@enquirer.com