By Craig Scott, Director of Gadsden Public Library
At 7:30 a.m. on Monday, Aug. 31, I received the kind of phone call no library director ever wants to get.
Amy McCary, our Circulation Manager and normally the first staff member to arrive each morning, was calling me from the Gadsden Public Library. She was crying.
“The library has been destroyed,” she told me. Those were her words, and at that moment, she had every reason to believe them.
When our Saturday crew had closed the library at 2 p.m. on Aug. 29, everything was normal. But sometime after they left, a copper plumbing fixture known as a water hammer arrestor failed above the men’s public restroom near our Children’s Department. The fitting had rusted through and fallen from a plastic water line, allowing clean water to spray at high pressure for what we now estimate was more than 20 hours.
By the time Amy arrived Monday morning, water had spread across much of the first floor and flooded the entire basement.
I live only a few blocks from the library, so I quickly dressed and arrived at 7:45 a.m. Amy and I located the failed arrestor on the restroom floor, and I immediately called Terry “TR” Rinault with the City of Gadsden Maintenance Department. TR sent two members of his crew right away, and they shut off the library’s main water supply near College Street.
Then came the part every librarian dreads: standing in a building filled with water and wondering where to begin.
The flooding affected our main Circulation area and roughly half of the first floor, including the section where our biography and nonfiction collections are located. And, as water tends to do, it found the lowest point. The entire basement was flooded.
Yet in the middle of an awful situation came one enormous blessing: our main book collections were unharmed.
Our shelving keeps the books approximately two feet above the floor, and that simple fact made an extraordinary difference. The Children’s Department was also spared, and the books that form the heart of our library collection remained safe.
Once the water was turned off, there was no time to stand around. Sleeves were rolled up, pant legs were raised and the cleanup began.
TR contacted Dallas Plumbing and they were at the library by 8:30 a.m. to fix and replace the arrestor. The library’s water was then turned on with no further issues.
TR also called ProClean Services of Rainbow City, and their response was immediate. By 9:30 a.m., on-site managers Zach Lancaster and Chris Kerzic had assessed the situation and quickly recognized the scale of the problem. They called in additional crews and equipment, and soon the building was filled with water vacuums, industrial fans and dehumidifiers.
For the remainder of the week — and throughout the Labor Day weekend — the library became a massive drying operation.
Travelers Insurance has had adjusters on site, working with Stacey Spurling in the City of Gadsden’s Risk Management Department. Mayor Craig Ford and Tena King from the Mayor’s Office have also been involved from the very first day, helping us work through the many details that come with an emergency of this size.
I cannot say enough about my library staff.
Everyone has adapted, pitched in and continued working under conditions that have been anything but normal. “Discombobulated” may be the best word to describe us right now, but our staff has handled the disruption with patience, professionalism and a wonderful sense of teamwork.
We are also deeply indebted to TR and the City of Gadsden Maintenance crew, and especially to Zach, Chris and the entire ProClean Services team. Their expertise, quick response and hard work have been nothing short of remarkable. The transformation they have accomplished in just over a week is difficult to describe unless you saw the building that Monday morning.
And now, thankfully, we get to reopen.
After being closed last week, the Gadsden Public Library will reopen to the public Tuesday, September 8, at 9 a.m.
Things will not look exactly normal. Our front desk will be temporary. Some staff members will be working from different offices and desks while damaged areas are repaired and replaced. There will still be fans, equipment, inconvenience and plenty of work ahead.
Realistically, it may take 30 to 60 days before everything is completely back to normal.
But we are getting there.
A week ago, standing in several inches of water and looking at a flooded basement, it was difficult to imagine reopening so quickly. Today, thanks to an extraordinary response from city employees, cleanup professionals, insurance representatives and our own library staff, the ending to this story is looking much better than the beginning.
This is certainly not how I planned to begin the second year of my Messenger column.
But perhaps there is a lesson in that, too.
Libraries are more than books, shelves and buildings. They are people. And when something goes wrong, it is people — working together, responding quickly and refusing to be defeated — who make all the difference.
We have a long way to go.
But the doors will be open Tuesday morning.
And after the week we have had, that feels pretty wonderful.
- Gadsden Public Library: 254 South College Street, downtown Gadsden (next to the U.S. Post Office). Phone: 256-549-4699
- Genealogy Branch: 2700 West Meighan Boulevard, Alabama City (next to the Ritz Theater at the corner of West Meighan and Wall Street). Phone: 256-549-4688
