On Tuesday, Nov. 11, workers in the Grambling State University Barnes and Noble bookstore could hear themselves splashing throughout the store.
The entire store was covered with water that leaked out from the ceiling the previous night.
Not only was there water covering the floor, there was debris from the ceiling scattered throughout the store.
“The entire floor and clothing section of the store was saturated,” said store manager Rosalyn Lewis. “It was at least two or three inches of water.”
The area that was flooded the most was the cash register, and there was merchandise on the floor covered in water.
In addition, many clothing merchandise were completely damaged as well as wooden fixtures which started to buckle and decay.
“We had to react quickly to this incident,” said Lewis. “The floor had to be removed quickly so mold would not develop.”
The bookstore was shut down for a week due to the flooding and the process was a lot of work.
The first day of the process was having a cleaning crew come into the store and blowing all of the water out of the store.
Once the water was gone the process of removing the carpet was next and this took two days to complete as well as drilling holes in the wall to help dry everything in the store.
Towards the end of the week, all of the wet and damaged insulation was taken down and dry ones were put up.
“We didn’t want to disappoint our alumni fans and students because this was our last home game and we wanted to be up and running for Saturday,” Lewis said.
According to Lewis there was a minor dent in the financial aspect of the store due to the incident.
“There was some financial lost and we are currently tallying everything up because there was a lot of wall damage, floor damage and clothing damage as well as other materials,” Lewis said.
At this point it is not an official value of how much it will cost to repair the damages to the bookstore.
The alumni were very supportive Lewis said, “we had a lot of inbox messages from alumni, I received a lot of text messages and some even made donations to the store to help us out,” Lewis said.
Students are in shocked that the flooding happened.
“I am very surprised that the store flooded and it seem different walking in the book store now but it is sad that this flooding occurred and I hope the store recover soon,” said Leslie Washington, a junior history major.
Lewis said it should not take long for the store to fully recover from the flood and the challenge is when to actually start installing the new carpet.
“We don’t want to disrupt the flow of the workers so we are looking to fix the floor during a reading period or right before final exams,” Lewis said.