GRAY – Despite a sprinkler head leak that flooded the recently renovated Gray Public Library with several thousand gallons of water, the library’s collection has emerged from the damage nearly unscathed.
At 4 p.m. on Sept. 9, library staff called in a repairman from the HiTech Fire Protection Co. in Poland to repair a minor sprinkler head leak behind the circulation desk.
“In the course of him looking at it, the sprinkler head came off,” said Library Director Joshua Tiffany.
The water ran for four minutes, releasing more than 3,000 gallons onto the library floor, Tiffany said. According to Tiffany, the Gray Fire/Rescue department assisted in vacuuming water from the floor immediately after the flooding. Although the water damaged a 3,600-square-foot area of carpeting, as well as a few baseboards and ceiling panels, only 12 books were destroyed, Tiffany said.
“It pretty much coated the floor and the entire back staff area and the circulation desk in front,” Tiffany said. “We got really lucky. Pretty much the main impact was we had the carpeting removed. We had very minimal damage done to any of our collections or materials or computers, so we really did get very lucky here.”
The carpeting, which will need to be replaced, was installed during a six-month, $1.5 million renovation and expansion that concluded in early March. The renovation entailed a number of comprehensive changes, including a 3,000-square-foot expansion, the removal of a rooftop cupola, four new bathrooms and a new entrance. The walls have been repainted, new tile carpeting has been installed, and there are new circulation and interlibrary loan loading areas.
“It’s entirely bittersweet,” Tiffany said. “If I think about how badly this could have gone if the sprinkler had released and hit someone or if it had gone off in the middle of the night, or this had happened over one of the collection areas, we would have been looking at almost catastrophic damage.”
Tiffany said the library was working with HiTech Fire Protection to pay for the damages, and that he did not know how much replacement carpeting and ceiling panels would cost. Officials at HiTech Fire Protection could not be reached for comment.
After the incident, the library closed for the following week. It reopened Tuesday morning.
“We feel really bad for the community because we had to be closed,” Tiffany said.
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