Flood!

Last weekend there was a huge downpour in Manoa and the Manoa Stream overflowed right through UH. The water went sweeping down from the BioMed building all the way down to the Stan Sherriff Center. But probably the hardest hit was Hamilton Library. All the run-off (that's an understatement) from the stream rammed right through the ground floor of the library and filled the offices with almost 7 feet of water. The fire alarm in the library went off and everyone exited the library, but after the all-clear was given some students went back inside. Ten minutes after the all-clear the flood waters came crashing through the doors and windows of the LIS department, the news said that some students had to break those narrow windows to escape the rising water.

Not sure if any of you have been down to the ground floor, but that's where the LIS department, GovDocs, Maps, Cataloging, Serials, and Acquisition offices are. I used to go through those shelves and offices everyday when I worked there and it's weird to see it all reduced to muddy rubble. Most of those maps, photos, and publications were pretty rare (some of them like only-one-in-the-world rare), like old archival maps and photos of territorial Hawai`i and all that. They're trying to save what they can, but the mud and water got everywhere. You can take a look at some pictures from the clean-up effort from my old boss on the link to the right. You can see in most of the pictures the waterline left by the mud on the walls of the hallways, it was pretty high. I remember Manoa Stream always used to turn into a river when it rained, but it's hard to imagine all that water pouring right through campus. kowai.