Cola Wealth Advisors Team Overcomes Water Damage After Frozen Pipe Bursts

On December 27th, 2022 at about 4:00 am, Rick Mantei strolled up to the Cola Wealth Advisors office in Lexington, SC to begin his work day, only to be met with several inches of water spilling over his shoes as he opened the door. Rushing to the source, he found water gushing from the ceiling of the right front offices, where a pipe had frozen and burst due to intensely cold weather.

Jumping into action, Rick tried to turn the water off himself, but didn’t have any luck. So, he finally called 911 for help. Shortly after, four firemen arrived to the scene, however, they were unable to turn off the geyser, so they called the Town of Lexington Water Services, who also happened to be unable to assist. At last, Rick contacted the gentleman who performs maintenance on the Cola Wealth firm’s sprinkler system, Steve Dawson. Fortunately, Steve was able to reach a solution and turn off the water.

By this time, the entire office had been submerged in three inches of water, and the ceilings of two offices were lying in soggy lumps on the floor and furniture with a few tenacious slabs still hanging limply from the rafters. A fresh whirlwind of activity ensued as Prestige Systems and Roto Rooter were called to the scene to begin the water mitigation process.

Around 6:00 am, Cola Wealth’s employees began to arrive fresh off the three-day weekend to find their workplace rather more aquatic than they left it on Friday. Rallying the troops, Rick assigned the team with various tasks, from lifting everything off the floor to relocating bigger pieces of furniture to the patio to prevent further damage, evaluating the condition of computers and other equipment, and so on. In addition, he coordinated another team to operate from the East Wing building to communicate with clients and ensure that regular business processes were being conducted to the best of their ability.