Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith
ilmarinen - MODERATOR
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Knifemaker / Craftsman / Service Provider
- Joined
- Aug 20, 2004
- Messages
- 36,472
Today we had a severe downburst storm at my store. It rained 6" in one hour. Everything flash flooded around the area ... streets full of stalled cars with water halfway up the doors ( including two police cars), parking lots with water to the cars floorboards, etc. While we were all watching the downpour with a little too much joy (the store is much higher than the lot), one of the gals came out of the back hollering, "Stacy, the roof is leaking in the safe room". I went back and water was pouring in over the safes. I tossed everything out in the hall and put the bins the inventory gets stored in at night on top of the safes and on the floor to catch the water. The big 40 quart tubs were filled in minutes. It didn't take long to realize this wasn't an ordinary roof leak. It was pouring cats and dogs outside but I went up the access ladder to the roof. The roof had a foot of water on it. The main drain is in the side wall of out unit and the rooftop drain is on the roof above us. The drain was clogged with all sorts of crap and not draining a bit. I waded through the water staying far away from the AC units which were 6" deep in the water. When I got to the place where the drain was I reached down and locked my fingers in the grate and pulled it out of the drain pit. All hell broke loose with a huge whirlpool and the water shooting out the side of the building a good twenty feet across the parking lot. The drain is a 12" PVC pipe that comes out the wall 3 feet above the sidewalk. Normally the rain runs down it and trickles out onto a French rock drain. It took over 15 minutes to drain the roof through the 12" pipe. I calculated the volume of water on the roof at around 10,000 gallons, which is roughly 40 tons. The drain rate would calculate to 40,000 gallons an hour. What was happening was the roof was starting to collapse in the back corner. A few more minutes and it could have caved in on us. I contacted the building agent and told him I just saved him $100,000. He said he had received a call from one of the other tenants who said his roof was leaking. He told me he couldn't have a fellow out for a couple hours, if the man could get there at all. When he heard the what was the issue and what I did, he was super happy I was there. He asked if he could do anything for me and I somewhat jokingly said he could buy me a new pair of shoes. He said he would have a check delivered tomorrow morning. He never asked what my shoes cost. He will have an engineer out tomorrow to assess the building roof.
The alarm system was soaked (also located in the secure safe room) but I got it dried and blown out. The alarm folks came out and will test it for the next week to see if there was any damage. Other than about 10 rolls of paper towels and four hours to clean everything up and dry the stuff from the safes, no real damage or loss. It could have been soooo much worse.
The alarm system was soaked (also located in the secure safe room) but I got it dried and blown out. The alarm folks came out and will test it for the next week to see if there was any damage. Other than about 10 rolls of paper towels and four hours to clean everything up and dry the stuff from the safes, no real damage or loss. It could have been soooo much worse.
