IOC Still Assessing Flood Damage

(ATR) The IOC tells Around the Rings a "move-in date" is to be determined following weekend flooding at Vidy.

About 150 staff are working elsewhere in Lausanne after the computer, power and phone networks were knocked out early Sunday when a water pipe burst near IOC headquarters, sending thousands of gallons of water into the building’s basement.

"Everything [below ground level] has been seriously damaged," media relations manager Sandrine Tonge tells ATR.

"It’s where we have our garage, part of our archives, server rooms, connection rooms …

"In terms of value, I don’t think there’s an estimate yet of how much it’s going to cost. We don’t know."

The good news, she says, is that the network should be up and running Wednesday.

"That means from tomorrow, everybody’s connected again, and hopefully we will have access to all our documents, we think."

According to Tonge, weeks will pass before the offices are totally back to normal, but parts of the building will be reopened "very soon".

"The entire IOC, as you know, is able to work remotely as we used to cover different events and travel around the world," she says, "so each team should be able to function as soon as our network is back up."

Despite initial reports that 20 to 30 percent of archives housed in the IOC basement suffered water damage, Tonge confirms nothing valuable – nor even necessary – is lost.

"It’s what we call our operational archives – the files from the IOC administration are stored there," she explains.

"I’ve heard that it was about 10 years worth of archives, but it’s operational archives, so it’s completely different from obviously our very valuable historical archives. From what I understand, all these archives are digitalized anyway."

Tonge says the area hardest hit by the flooding was the J.A. Samaranch Room, a basement space used for IOC meetings not involving the Executive Board.

"That was the room that suffered the most, actually, because it was underground," she tells ATR.

"The windows were broken from the outside, but the rest of the rooms are OK. Our offices are OK and the ground floor is OK. The Samaranch Room is minus one, and the water just went in and went down.

"I don’t have the details of how much work is needed to put everything back into place, but they’re working hard on it."

As for the Dec. 4-5 EB meeting, Tonge says it’s still on.

"I can’t tell you if it will be up and running with all the facilities in HQ, or if we will have to move the EB. We don’t know that yet," she admits.

"I guess we’ll be able to know in the next week or two how quickly we can have all the facilities there because having the office is one thing, but then having all the meeting rooms to host people and host journalists, that’s a separate thing.

"And obviously the kitchen. We don’t have the full scale of how long it’s going to take to be all back up and running, including the kitchen. So once we know it, we’ll be able to tell you where the EB’s taking place."

A number of IOC functions, including Marketing, are located at the Maison du Sport and were unaffected by the flooding.

Reported by Matthew Grayson

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