2008
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1/5/08 2008 we started the year with boxes of wet books. These had been dumped at the recycle bin by someone who didn't want the books and of course it was raining. Tami (one of the workers at storage) rescued them and grabbed Janice a couple of days later when she came in to work. When Tami opened up the furnace room and showed them to Janice she was in shock, so many books and all very damp to wet.
1/5/08 One of her first comments was "if this ever happens again call me as soon as possible because if I could have got to these the first day there would have been nearly no damage to them." The first thing Janice did was to open up a unit. Then she laid down some pallets and piled the boxes of books in. What you see here and in the first photo are what Janice couldn't get onto the tables and were the driest of the lot aftersorting.
1/5/08 Then the next thing Janice did was put up the only two tables we had, another gift from someone that didn't want them. These are 6 foot folding tables, which she bridged with another tabletop to make 15 feet of tables. The power reel gave Janice light and a fan to work with as there are no lights in these units and only one power outlet in the middle of the building. With wet books you have to keep the air moving to stop mold from moving in.
1/5/08 These were given a rough sort as they were unboxed.
1/5/08 The more Janice worked at getting them out of the boxes the longer the three lines of books became. This was one of those days when she thought she would never see the end of the books and kept wondering if she had enough tables to spread them all out on.
1/5/08 Here Janice has been putting sheets of newsprint between the books to work as wicks to pull the moisture out. This was a very makeshift way of drying books but it work because the building was at only about 50 degrees at the time. The fan ran nonstop during the day, Janice was afraid to leave it on at night as it is an old fan and she didn't want to start a fire.
The Flood
3/18/08 Janice got a very early phone call from Tami. “Please get out here as soon as you can we have had an incident.” Click! You can imagine the thoughts that raced through her head, no clue what had happened, as she rounded the curves at Reedville she said, “Oh thank God there is no smoke.” When she got there everyone was running around trying to mop up the hallways. It turned out that someone had broken a fire sprinkler head off on the second floor over four of our units. She will tell the rest of this story.
3/18/08 This is what I saw when I opened up the war unit down the isle on the right side. I went outside and called my son Zane and said I need you to go to the house and pull all my rags out of the bottom of the hall closet and towels out of the bathroom and please get dad and my camera and get down here quick there has been a flood. Thank you Zane for bringing your camera and taking all of these early photos of the flood damage and getting time off from work to help us. We could not have done this with your, Eddies and Jeff's help.
3/18/08 This is the left side of the war unit, unfortunately I was out of shelf space so had put down news print and had books piled on it just a few days before, actually they didn't get that much water on them.
3/18/08 Here is the back of the war unit, by the time this picture was taken it was some what dried out.
3/18/08 The next unit over showing the right side. All the boxes had to be pulled out of this row on the left, which has close to a ton of CD media.
3/18/08 This is the left side of the same unit. All of this had to be moved out dried up by re boxing the wettest. This wall is well over 2 tons of books, Thank you Jeff who came over from 185th we couldn't have done this all with out you. Once things were dried up sort of we, were told by Robert the manager that we had to get them back into our unit. Really they should have stayed in a dry unit at least over night.
3/18/08 This book truck was in this unit at the front waiting to be shelved and took a direct hit. There was about 3/4 of an inch of water on top of these when I pulled them out of the unit.
3/18/08 This whole wall of books had to be moved, re-boxed as needed etc. as you can see the water came down over them.
3/18/08 This photo is one of the other two units full of periodicals and water. I made the decision that the books were the most important. When the towels arrived I put Eddie to work mopping water off the books in the war unit. Zane to taking photo's and I started picking up boxes off the floor and moping the worst of the water off of them and flipping them upside down on the racks to dry the best they could on their own.
In between all this Robert the manager came in and I told him turn OFF the Heat and turn ON the blower. We have to keep this place cold and the air moving or everything will mold in no time. We have to dry this place out as fast as we can. The next morning when I came out the building was at a very warm 30 degrees and most days for the next two months the building stayed in the 30 to 45 degree range. Nice to work in if you like it cold, sorry I don't but I did it any way.
3/18/08 Yes the water was that deep in this periodicals unit in places.
3/18/08 Thank God I had just finished removing all of the City directories from this unit. The last load had gone out to the big warehouse the week before. There was 3.5 to 4 inches of water all along the outside steel wall.
3/18/08 These two books took a direct hit along with nearly every thing on this shelf. I used these two book's as a test in drying as figured they were toast and would have to be replaced so no mater what lets see if we can save them.
3/18/08 Typical water damage, all of the gray streaks and mess on the books was from the dirt and cement that came down with the water.
3/18/08 This is Janice taking a break and catching her breath while drying books, yes those are water drops on the shelf support.
3/18/08 Zane's line up of books to dry in the drying unit, sorry to say I hadn't gotten all of the last books picked up from January so that he had to do it, you never saw any one box books so fast. Thank you Zane.
3/18/08 One of our two test subjects
3/18/08 This is the other one of the test books from the top shelf of the war unit.
3/18/08 Lots of newsprint and blotter paper to help dry books, here is an idea of the damage to this cartload.
3/18/08 Here is Servpro to the rescue. When I was asked about power in the building and told the man he replied, "What there is no power but one outlet in this building on this floor?" "Yep only one down in the middle on each floor and a couple outside." "Is there any 220?" "No! You have to be kidding."
3/18/08 Shortly this stuff was being set up while they called in power.
3/18/08 Later they brought in this big generator to power all the dehumidifiers and fans.
3/18/08 This is one of several garbage cans that the dehumidifiers were dumping water into, after just a couple hours of running here is how deep it was.
3/23/08 Opps! So that is why everything went dead, time to call Servpro.
3/23/08 This power converter box tells the rest of the story.
3/24/08 Things are drying nicely. This is the black test book with 100 lbs of buckshot on a pressboard. Note it is nearly back to being flat.
3/24/08 Here is the other test book in this pile with 100 lbs of buckshot on top of the pile with press boards and books. Being a book binder and having taken a class in January on paper making I had a very good idea of what I could get away with doing if I could keep the building cold.
3/24/08 Oh dear these did get soaked, who would have thought the painted labels would soften and stick to the sleeves and the titles run?
3/24/08 Drying CD's
3/24/08 One of the two dehumidifiers that we had to buy when Robert had them pull the Survpro units out. We also bought 6 big fans and a big work light this week.
3/29/08 The nights collection of water with our dehumidifiers. For most of three months I was taking out 12 gals of water in two of the units a day.
4/4/08 Here Ruth and I surprised Tami for her Birthday early with a gift of a Pendleton blanket. Yes we have fun and good days too, it isn't all back breaking freezing work out here.
4/11/08 One of several loads heading out to storage in the big warehouse, we needed more room to work on the damaged books and space for the new stuff coming in until Janice can catalog it etc.
4/12/08 Most books are nearly dry, and here are the two test books still being weighted down and drying. So far it has been to cold formold to grow thank God! Yes the heat is still off.
4/14/08 Darn it would start raining, well at least Zane's old truck is loaded and I am on my way to the big warehouse with yet another load. Ruth asked me how I load the truck, "one box at a time."
4/21/08 Well this one the pages are cockled and the outside edges are stained but the book is very dry and readable. A good example of how some of the worst of them look.
4/25/08 A much needed change for us, Ruth is checking out one of the big presses at Northeast Document Conservation Center in Andover, MA.
4/25/08 This is Deborah Rossi checking out their big guillotine. Her comment was "I need one of these at NEHGS." This is I think a 36" floor model where ours is a 19" tabletop model by the same maker. They make fast work of trimming books and cutting reams of paper down to size; just keep your hands and fingers out of the way. Thank you Deborah for arranging to take us there, we both learned a lot and had a great time.
4/27/08 We are in Boston, this at the NEHGS Annual meetings evening party. This is Deborah Rossi explaining to Ruth one of the books she has been working on. She had a fantastic display again of her hard work. She also had a fantastic collection of pictures made into a video to play for everyone to enjoy showing how and what we do in repairing books.
5/2/08 Ruth visiting with a friend Rick Clarke at her high school reunion at Annie Wright in Tacoma, Washington. This year things were a bit tight on travel dates but we got it all in and lots of books bought too.
5/5/08 Here is Ruth checking out the books at the Heritage Quest Research Library in Sumner, Washington.
5/7/08 Of course none of our trips are complete with out buying more library materials, and maybe a tramp through a cemetery or two. Here we found Janice's Great Grandparents and their daughter in Centralia, Washington.
5/30/08 Still working on cataloging the damaged books and showing the damage for the insurance people.
7/9/08 Another shipment of a gift of books that the person who packed them left the boxes about half empty, sorry that is not the way to do it. As you see the boxes caved in and the books inside were all tossed around and some were damaged. If you are shipping books pick out smaller boxes and fill them full and remember to tape all three ways around the box like these are, and keep the weight under 45 lbs. the delivery folks charge more for over 50 lbs. They don't want to have to lift them either.
8/5/08 Still working on listing the books, found this one with mold under the dust jacket. While we were gone in April the heat was turned on to soon though before leaving I had told Robert to please not turn on the heat. So we have a very few books with mold on the covers. These were isolated until they could be worked with at a later date.
8/24/08 Robert inspecting this little problem, yes the Ryder truck turned a bit to close to the post and got hung up.
8/24/08 As you can see they did get the truck off of the post but it took some fancy driving back and forth to do it. We were sure glad we were not the ones that had to take this truck back and explain what happened.
8/27/08 Here is another book buying trip and a very much needed break from the mess in storage for Janice. Here we are in Philadelphia, PA enjoying all the historical sights we can do on the scooter and foot. What a great experience this was.
8/31/08 A trip to Philadelphia would not be complete with out visiting this gravesite. This is one of several Cemeteries we visited.
8/31/08 This photo is the front of the home of Betsy Ross.
9/3/08 This photo shows part of the conservation lab at the Genealogical and Historical Society library in Philadelphia.
9/3/08 Here is another section of the lab where they were sorting a large donation from the Chew family. Note the sheet like thing hanging from the ceiling with the plastic tube coming down from it this is going into a plastic bucket under the table. This is a tool for catching the drip from a leaky roof. So we are not the only ones with water problems.
9/5/08 Here is one of the reasons that Ruth and Janice traveled to Philadelphia besides to buy books. FGS awards banquet night.
9/5/08 Dr. George K. Schweitzer and Ruth C. Bishop
9/5/08 Say what? Me? Talk about a surprise this was it, so all the hard work paid off in more ways than one. Janice M. Healy and Wendy B. Elliott giving an award of Distinguished Service to Janice. Wendy had been out to visit Ruth and the library just a couple of weeks before the flood. So she got to see it before the disaster.
12/2/08 Here is another shipment of library materials out of Ohio. Janice jokes about all the dead chickens that Larry sent to her. Yes boxes and boxes full of library materials all labeled "Gerber's Real Amish Farm Country Chickens"