55 Years Gone

A few years back, we did a photo essay entitled Twelve Years Gone. It chronicled the 12 year long drainage project that took place right in front of our store. During that time the street was dug out deep enough and wide enough to run three Greyhound buses side by side through an underground canal. The pumping station less than 100 feet from our front door added extra pumps and the discharge basin was widened.

It was supposed to save the city from flooding.

It failed.

And 55 years of our work was gone.

In the blink of an eye.

In the flash of a flood.

When the levee broke.

You can clearly see where the flood water from Hurricane Katrina settled. Look at the top of the building. The right side of the roof has part of its overhang left; the left side has none. At the far right of the roof, you'll see what appear to be a wall. This is a three-foot high brick wall that ran along the perimeter of the building's roof. The front and left hand side wall is gone. There was no sign at all as to where the bricks wound up. Our membrane-roof landed a block away. Right in front of our driveway, you'll see an unevenness in the sidewalk - - that's the concrete section housing the manhole cover and its chimney. The pressure of the water blew it up.

 In the foreground are 3 of our counters which floated, then flipped over. On the right, you'll see hundreds of Squadron Signal Publications fused together by the water.

This picture was taken at an angle looking toward the front of the shop. At the far right, you can see part of the front window. Directly beneath that, you'll see the file cabinet that used to be next to the desk which is face down. Those are 3 more counters that floated and flipped.

This shot is looking back toward the train section. The only thing standing is the Heki tree rack. In the right foreground is our world famous, rotating display case. It disintegrated in the water. The water also washed everything off of the pegboard.

You're looking at $10,000 (at cost) of Osprey books. Both racks were toppled by the flood. Did you know that books expand when they get wet? It took awhile to pry the books out of the rack. Why not just leave the books in the rack, you ask? Do you know how heavy wet books are?

We're now in the plastic model room. That's our rocket engine/dope rack laying in the middle of the floor. Note the empty pegboard to the right; the water swept it clean. Not too mention all the soggy plastic model kits on the floor.

Back to the train side. Note the jumbled mess. The counter to the right landed upside down. Every glass counter top broke, as did most of the glass shelves.

Looking toward the back of the plastic model room. More toppled racks, wet books, and floating models. Not one book survived.

To see the work that was done to "prevent" this, go to our photo essay: Twelve Years Gone

Photos by Mike Goodwin and Jeff Junker