Farragut loses some cover
Why? Three pressbox-adjacent awnings had to be removed by order of Knox County Schools, which happened because “Knox County hires inspectors, structural engineers every two or four years to periodically inspect bleachers. When they came (in late June) there was a problem,” FHS principal Dr. Jon Bartlett said.
The awnings were made out of “aluminum and metal roofing,” and they were installed “above the press box, I think it was 2020-2021 (school year) to protect coaches… on the two sides I think it was probably 2024 when they were to protect people from the weather,” which Bartlett added was a “good place for our Quarterback Club to go up there and sit; and it was overflow (seating) for the pressbox personnel” given the stadium’s “pressbox can only hold 20 or 21 people in there by the order of the fire marshal… you’ve got 50 or 75 people that need to be dealing with pressbox duties.”
The awning on the westward side (scoreboard side) of the pressbox was about 60 feet long and on the eastern side was about 30 feet long, added the FHS principal, also noting all of these awnings were 8 to 10 feet wide, roughly the width of the pressbox.
Since they were installed “we‘ve had 60,70, 80 mph winds when we’ve had storms and nothing (damage-wise) has happened; we’d have heavy snows and nothing has happened,” Bartlett said. “We don’t understand why it was an issue, but it just was.”
The FHS principal said the FHS administration did what could to bring the awnings in compliance in with county and insurance standards.
“We consulted multipliable structural engineers and tried to go though the bleacher company and stuff like that,” Bartlett said. “The fact was that all the structural engineers we talked to would not sign off on it because the bleacher company would not sign off on it.
“Basically nobody wanted to accept the liability if something was to happen,” he added. “We get that, we understand that.”
Bartlett did not elaborate on any plans to permanently replace the awnings with another structure, such an expanding the footprint of the pressbox.
