The Pipe is falling!

I’m in my pj’s, under my feather quilt and another quilt keeping warm, poking around on my laptop and watching random TV shows. 

A perfect way to end a long week of craziness.

Where I work, it is a 4 story building library, with a sub-basement.  Monday I wasn’t in at work as I was sick. But later in the morning (or around lunch-time), I checked my Facebook, and saw that the library was closed due to a water main break.

“Great!” I said to myself, then later in the afternoon I get the message from the Dean of the Library (where I work) saying the library will be closed until further notice.

Apparently a 14” pipe for return water (thankfully NOT waste-water!) somehow fell 6 feet, breaking free from its support, and tore a huge hole in one of the walls outside my department, and while it fell down, it hit one of the sprinklers, and of course it set it off. It went off in the hallway between my department and another department, on the ground floor—a.k.a. the basement (and we still have the sub-basement underneath that).

So, anyway, it’s really a long story, BUT, 1) we are very, no, we are extremely THANKFUL that nobody was in the hallway at that time when it happened. 2) everyone worked together to quickly take things off the floor (computers, anything electronic), and just make sure everyone got out safely. 3) We had quick emergency response to the situation.

We were closed on Tuesday. Then we came in Wednesday morning for meetings and worked together to plan for our temporary offices. Since my office and another office were affected by it (along with 2 other departments as well), we worked out a plan on the things we’d need to do, needed to bring up when allowed access to our office, etc.  Of course, we could only use the elevator at set times, so most of us actually CARRIED down book carts down the stairs! (I know, crazy, right?!) We loaded up the stuff, and then set them by the elevator so it could make the trip up to our floor. After we settled comfortably in our temporary office (with windows!), the 4 of us in my department felt we can handle it for a month.

Yesterday involved some more physical work by helping move collections of books from the damaged offices to other rooms that were not affected by the pipes. Try maneuvering the book carts over thick electrical cords (for carpet fans, etc) and trying not to tip them over.  Then shelving them on temporary shelves. Fun. And a good work out.

Today, I arrived at work, completely wiped out, and hoping I wouldn’t have to go down there again.  Can one say I was little shell-shocked when I saw all the damage caused by that one huge pipe? You just had to be there to get the sense of what I’m experiencing.

Mentally exhausted, along with physically exhausted. But, extremely thankful that everyone is okay, nobody was harmed, and for the excellent teamwork the whole staff & library pulled off. 

So, we’ll be “roughing it” for about a month while we have a great crew of construction workers, carpet cleaners, etc. as they repair, renovate, rebuild the whole area. 

And I deserve every bit tonight to be warm and comfortable in my pj’s under my warm feather quilt and sharing this story with y’all tonight.