Bookstore still recovering

Though the Portland State Bookstore is fully operational, the cleaning and recovery effort is still underway after 120,000 gallons of water filled the basement on Sunday, Feb. 7. The store estimates thousands of dollars worth of damage but the price and availability of textbooks will not be affected.

Disaster recovery teams arrived at approximately 2 a.m. the Monday morning following the flood, but the pump trucks and the bulk of the water were gone by approximately 9 a.m. The bookstore’s upper level was open by the end of the day on Feb. 8, while the lower level of the bookstore remained closed for over a week. 

The process that followed included removing the wet carpet, cutting out the sheet rock as high up as 14 inches in some places and installing trailer-mounted dehumidifiers to dry out the basement. The bookstore was concerned about moisture and mold causing possible health problems, so the staff acted quickly, said PSU Bookstore President and CEO Ken Brown.

Brown explained that the losses can be split into three categories: product, assets and structural elements. Regarding product, Brown estimates that over 1,000 textbooks, $4,000 in clothes and $19,000 in merchandise were lost. Some clothing was received on Feb. 5 and had not even been available for sale yet.
Assets packed in cardboard boxes that were exposed to water had to be thrown away. This included store supplies, such as the store’s entire stock of packing tape.

Structurally, a lot of damage was done and items need to be replaced or reconstructed. Walls, carpets, machines, computers and many other items were damaged beyond repair. The servers, updated only four months ago, were unaffected by the water, Brown said.

Moisture has also caused damage.

“The phone system is not acting normal,” Brown said.

Brown said the water levels varied throughout the basement. Water was as high as six inches to three-and-a-half feet in some areas. The door acted as a dam and the elevator shaft filled up with water, resembling a reservoir.

“I could see there was significant water covering the basement, up the first step of the stairwell,” said Brown of what he saw at about 11 p.m. that Sunday evening.

Brown also saw that water was coming through the fire exit adjacent to the administrative offices.

The problem originated from a water storage tank used for the building as a fire suppressant.

“The electronic monitoring evidently failed catastrophically,” Brown said. “It told itself it needed to fill the tank up [with water] but the tank was full, never shut off and overflowed with a lot of water.”

Brown and the present managers could not walk into the water until killing the power to the building, because of the fear of being electrocuted. They opened the cleaning drains, but since they were not built for large amounts of water, the water moved slowly.

The PSU Bookstore has flooded before, most recently in March of 2002.

Brown reports that it happened with a “slightly different monitoring system, but had the same type of problems.”

The prior flood occurred during business hours, so the bookstore did not lose as much product since there was no standing water and the water noticeably crept in.

Brown is unsure how much the cost to rebuild will be this time. Engineers, attorneys, insurance adjusters and the university are still sorting out what occurred. The water monitoring system was installed eight months ago, so the manufacturer could potentially be liable for some of the damage as well.

Brown stresses that “everything is in deliberation” and a lot of things are unknown at this time.

The PSU Bookstore is going through the tremendous job of sorting through damaged merchandise and planning reconstruction.

“[Our] staff has been wonderful and phenomenal,” Brown said. “They have really stepped up.”

The PSU Bookstore wants to assure students that this chain of events will not affect them, and if professors submit their course requests on time, all necessary textbooks will be available.

Also, it is important to know that the PSU Bookstore flood will not affect textbook prices, Brown said.

“They are absolutely separate things. Textbook prices are driven by publishers, and a single event in a single college bookstore has no affect on the national level,” he said.