Keith
11-13-2006, 06:48 PM
Last Friday evening, I met with Patrick and mranderson for dinner at Nino's on NW. Expressway. We had a great time, and reflected back on mrandersons' father's life. When it came time for us to leave, I drove across town to my church, where on Friday evenings, around 25-30 adults meet and play board games, dominoes, etc....
At 9:50 PM., I decided to go home so that I could watch the 10 PM news. As I drove out of the church parking lot, I noticed a large amount of water flowing down the street in front of our fellowship hall. The water was moving rather quickly down the street, so I quickly pulled back in to the parking lot to investigate. I traced the flowing water back to one of the church's glass doors that goes in to our sanctuary. As I approached the glass door, I could see water gushing out from under the door. I shined my flashlight inside, but couldn't see anything.
I ran back to the area where the adults were playing games, and announced that we had a problem. We all headed over to the sanctuary. Once the alarm system was disengaged, we unlocked the glass door, and were greeted with 3-4 inches of running water. I thought a pipe had busted, until I could hear water running upstairs....where our baptistry is located.
Come to find out, our maintenance man turned on the water to the baptistry at 3:30 that afternoon to fill it up. He forgot he left it on. The baptistry overflowed in to the choir loft, and it caused part of the ceiling to collapse, allowing massive amounts of water to go into three classrooms and our choir room.
Myself, and another guy, waded through the water, and sloshed our way to the water controls to the baptistry. As we walked in to the control room, we were greeted with water coming from above, and deeper water below. We struggled to turn the water off, and then the clean up began.
We contacted the maintenance man, the pastor, and several other members, to help us get rid of the water. Several of us grabbed push brooms, and started pushing the water out of the rooms. We had lots of stuff stored on the floor, including some computers...that were all ruined. We also found out that some of the water made it in to our walls. When the pastor arrived, he knew that this situation was more than we could handle, so he called Blackmon Mooring Steamatic, to come help us.
They arrived at around midnight.....I left at around 12:45, and the maintenance man left at around 2:30 AM
The next morning, I arrived at 9 AM. and the water was all gone, but the carpets were still soaked. The Blackmon Mooring people left us with around 30 blowers, to help dry the carpet. We wound up having to move 3-4 classrooms in to the auditorium for Sunday.
Anyway, my somewhat boring night turned into a very busy weekend. We hope to have everything back in place by next Sunday...which means I'll be busy again this coming Saturday.
Ha! And people say nothing exciting happens at our church.
At 9:50 PM., I decided to go home so that I could watch the 10 PM news. As I drove out of the church parking lot, I noticed a large amount of water flowing down the street in front of our fellowship hall. The water was moving rather quickly down the street, so I quickly pulled back in to the parking lot to investigate. I traced the flowing water back to one of the church's glass doors that goes in to our sanctuary. As I approached the glass door, I could see water gushing out from under the door. I shined my flashlight inside, but couldn't see anything.
I ran back to the area where the adults were playing games, and announced that we had a problem. We all headed over to the sanctuary. Once the alarm system was disengaged, we unlocked the glass door, and were greeted with 3-4 inches of running water. I thought a pipe had busted, until I could hear water running upstairs....where our baptistry is located.
Come to find out, our maintenance man turned on the water to the baptistry at 3:30 that afternoon to fill it up. He forgot he left it on. The baptistry overflowed in to the choir loft, and it caused part of the ceiling to collapse, allowing massive amounts of water to go into three classrooms and our choir room.
Myself, and another guy, waded through the water, and sloshed our way to the water controls to the baptistry. As we walked in to the control room, we were greeted with water coming from above, and deeper water below. We struggled to turn the water off, and then the clean up began.
We contacted the maintenance man, the pastor, and several other members, to help us get rid of the water. Several of us grabbed push brooms, and started pushing the water out of the rooms. We had lots of stuff stored on the floor, including some computers...that were all ruined. We also found out that some of the water made it in to our walls. When the pastor arrived, he knew that this situation was more than we could handle, so he called Blackmon Mooring Steamatic, to come help us.
They arrived at around midnight.....I left at around 12:45, and the maintenance man left at around 2:30 AM
The next morning, I arrived at 9 AM. and the water was all gone, but the carpets were still soaked. The Blackmon Mooring people left us with around 30 blowers, to help dry the carpet. We wound up having to move 3-4 classrooms in to the auditorium for Sunday.
Anyway, my somewhat boring night turned into a very busy weekend. We hope to have everything back in place by next Sunday...which means I'll be busy again this coming Saturday.
Ha! And people say nothing exciting happens at our church.