We’re (Still) Open During Construction!
- The Friendship Center
- 8 hours ago
- 4 min read
Flood damage from a fire suppression system leak on May 1 damaged parts of The Friendship Center's 1430 Sanders Street facility, including the first floor of the onsite shelter space.
With an uncertain timeline for repairs from flood damage sustained in May, TFC is partnering with Family Promise of Greater Helena to temporarily offset reduced long-term shelter capacity.
Back in the very beginning of May, The Friendship Center had a surprise at our Sanders Street facility that houses our offices and shelter. Long after close of business on Friday, May 1, our Operations Director was alerted by the fire department that our building had experienced a catastrophic overnight leak in our fire suppression system. By the time staff arrived to inspect the damage, a combination of anti-freeze and water had rained down, flooding much of the first-floor shelter area, the hallway between our offices and shelter, and parts of our basement storage and utilities areas. Our Operations Director’s description of the waist-height water level in our boiler room was like something out of the flood sequence in Titanic.
Now, there's never a good time to have a fire suppression system leak with an unknown cause…especially not when it impacts our onsite shelter. But our staff moved fast and effectively to address the damage and ensure the safety of our clients. Our on-call Crisis Line Advocate quickly arranged hotel rooms for all shelter residents while our Operations Director mobilized a water damage restoration company to begin cleanup and bring in fans to start drying out the building through the weekend.
Meanwhile, with our fire suppression and alarm system compromised in the immediate aftermath, we had the unglamorous task of conducting a 24/7 fire watch, where every room in the building had to be physically checked for smoke or fire once every hour until the system came back online. This can be an especially grueling task for the intrepid souls who take overnight shifts, but thanks to our dedicated staff and board, we were able to quickly cover all shifts until the fire suppressant system was up and running again several days later.
We're fortunate that the flooding did not interrupt our ability to provide services, but the extensive damage has affected other aspects of our operations and delayed our ability to move new clients into our onsite shelter. Contractors worked through the first few weeks of May to salvage items that weren’t touched by anti-freeze and dismantle everything that wasn’t so lucky, but we're still in a position of having to replace furniture and appliances from the first-floor shelter area with an uncertain timeline for replacing flooring and walls in impacted areas on both the first floor and in the basement.
Anybody familiar with insurance claims for property damage can tell you this is not a quick and seamless process. We know our insurance will cover most of the costs to replace what was lost or damaged, and our hope is still that it will cover the full costs when all is said and done. We're currently in wait-and-see mode: Contractors have quoted the construction costs for at least $60,000 more than our initial insurance claim payout—a gap that we’re working with our insurance company to close before determining our next steps.
Many of our supporters have reached out after reading an August story in the Independent Record about the flood damage to our building. To all who were inspired to offer words of support or make monetary donations to offset the cost of building repairs, THANK YOU! Our community is and always has been what makes The Friendship Center a reliable, life-saving resource for survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking (DVSAS) in our tri-county area. We’re going on four months since the flooding and frankly, we’d hoped by this time to have a more conclusive update from the insurance process to share, and a clearer idea of when construction and restoration work can take place. As of now, those details remain elusive. When that changes, and when we have more clarity about whether or not there will be a significant gap between the repair costs and what insurance will ultimately cover, we’ll be back with that news.
In the meantime, our free, confidential services remain available to anybody experiencing crisis or safety concerns related to DVSAS in Lewis and Clark, Broadwater, and Jefferson counties. That means preparing for the fall and winter months, when we know our clients’ needs for shelter are higher and we can ill-afford to be without the five rooms on the first floor of our shelter. Our hotel/motel accommodations are essential for clients needing emergency short-term shelter, but it is not a long-term solution for clients with long-term needs, particularly if they have dependent children living with them. The cost of accommodating all shelter clients at hotels indefinitely is also unsustainable for our budget. With the uncertain timeline for getting our first-floor shelter rooms ready to again house residents, we have a partner to thank for stepping up and offering additional shelter capacity for TFC clients.
Many of you in the Helena community may already be aware, but Family Promise of Greater Helena has been on a journey of building their new 16-room overnight shelter. Construction is set to wrap up soon and they anticipate being able to start accommodating families at the beginning of 2027. In that interim period before they can open their doors to their client families, they have offered up their space as a temporary location for TFC clients with long-term shelter needs, effectively providing a stopgap to ensure we have adequate shelter capacity for our clients while our first-floor shelter space undergoes repairs.
Our partners at Family Promise personify something that’s always been true about our work: We’re never alone in it. We’re part of a much bigger team working to meet the needs of our community. The organizations, agencies, businesses, and individuals who walk alongside us are the reason we are able to walk alongside our clients and remind them that they are not alone on their journeys (dare we say, come hell or high water?).
Outside of temporarily housing some of our long-term shelter residents in Family Promise’s new space, things are business as usual at The Friendship Center thanks to the steadfast support of a community that values our mission. We hope we have an update on repairs to share sooner rather than later. Until then, join us in showing the wonderful folks at Family Promise some love for all the ways they show up for our community!
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