By COLlive reporter
A heavy rainstorm that struck the New York City area late Monday night into Tuesday morning caused flooding throughout Brooklyn and Queens.
In Crown Heights, Chabad Headquarters 770, as well as the Central Chabad Library next door, sustained flooding, bochurim who are active in maintaining and updating the library facilities told COLlive.com.
During the flooding, the power in the Library went out as well, rendering a newly installed water draining system ineffective, the bochurim were shocked to discover.
Due to the power outage, some of the flood water reached the part of the library where the seforim are kept, however, once the power was restored, the newly installed water draining system was activated and hydraulically pumped out all the water from the basement to the street.
Some of the seforim, which thankfully sustained only minor water damage during the electricity outage, were picked up Tuesday morning by the Polygon Group, a professional restoration company that specializes in restoring water-damaged books through the use of vacuum freeze drying chambers.
This is the same company that was used in the past when seforim were damaged. Using a system of vacuum freezing and then air drying in expensive and state-of-the-art machinery the seforim will be expertly restored to prevent any damage and warping.
“The restoration process should take a few weeks, after which time the seforim will be brought back to their true home in 770,” the bochurim told COLlive.com.
Milder winters, more frequent flooding with longer periods of droughts, hotter summers…
I know global warming isn’t true, but imagine it was, things would be so much worse!
If New York actually took care of the infrastructure so that rainwater drained properly.
This hurricane season was supposedly going to be, like, the worst ever due to climate change.
Didn’t happen, B”H.
…fewer hurricanes (there have been no major ones yet this year). Did you forget that, or are you deliberately ignoring it?
This is a precious possession
It’s upsetting to hear about this issue once again
Maybe seforim should be moved above ground or a backup generator installed
Water draining system is great but they need to think of something else. Instead of paying money to restore seforim over and over maybe use the money to keep them in water safe environment. Maybe move the library out of the basement and get a new room for them. It makes no sense to have priceless treasures where they are in danger of flooding over and over.
a marine battery for the water pump system