What A Fan-Tastic Week

The trials and tribulations of a flooded office

It was around 6:30pm on a Wednesday evening that the deluge struck. With biblical rains in Levin our downpipe just couldn't take the strain and it backed up causing a quickly expanding lake above the front office ceiling. WOOSH! It collapsed, flooding everything, the desks, the computers, the phones, and anything not inside the wooden drawers, that then got soaked anyway.

The rains continued, the water needed more room and eventually the whole of the reception area, the Managers office next door, our cool meeting room, in fact all the way up the corridor to the sofa and offices along the way, had taken on a layer of water.

Annette was first in the next morning and remarks were exclaimed as she sploshed her way to what was left of her desk. Soon after that Jo arrived and more remarks were exclaimed and a phone call to Mike, "Um, probably best if you come in early Mike, there's been an event!"

As Mike arrived half an hour later, he witnessed another example of how this Age Concern Horowhenua team works: evaluate, confirm, act, review. Annette and Jo had evaluated the mess, confirmed it needed tidying up and that they could, and were dragging out the mess. A quick list scribbled on the whiteboard of what needed to be done, who needs to be told, and then do.

First was close the office and let everyone know.

Then give Kim from the Horowhenua District Council the bad news that we probably can't host the Powering Up! event we had been so looking forward to - grr. Kim popped around, exclamations were heard, and yup she's gonna have to move everything to their building and off she went to make it happen.

This is the second takeaway from the day, people are amazing when disaster hits. Kim called a Council Building Inspector and asked if he could accompany her down to run his professional eye over the broken office, which he duly did, reassured us and gave us some contacts. As the news filtered out we had many people check-in with offers of help and office space if we needed, all so gratefully received.

Amanda and Christy arrived to start their working day around 8:20am and even more remarks were exclaimed!

By now we have contacted everyone we can think of:

• Building owner
• Our Board
• Anyone and everyone coming in for classes
• Facebook, the website, and our phone system was letting people know we were shut, and why

At the same time we're making calls to carpet people and plumbers / building firms who both came through for us, thank you to

• Kingston And Kemp: https://www.plumberlevin.co.nz/
• Carpet Recovery Ltd: https://carpetrecovery.nz/services/carpet-drying/

The guys from Kingston and Kemp, exclaimed before they crawled all over the building to find the issue (our drainage pipe was overloaded by the sheer amount of water falling from the skies) and returned with a "temporary fix" after consultation with the boss. Working out the full fix might take longer.

And then Stu from Carpet Recovery Ltd who, after a few remarks being exclaimed as the team moved ALL the furniture off all the wet carpet (boy some of those cabinets are heavy), got into it with a massive water vacuum cleaner - no more sploshing through the carpet. He then installed massive fans and a number of industrial dehumidifiers returning to plug in a few more by the end of the day. They were left to do their magic with a daily pop-in by the team to check on the water levels and make sure the machines were still going.

Monday, we are dry enough to put everything back, those cabinets didn't get any lighter.

Tuesday, we were back open to the community, SAYGo classes were running, and everything back to normal.

Except Annette and Jo who are now in a temporary office and feeling very put out by it all, understandably.

Now begins the insurance, re-build process ... we'll let you know when it's all done.