COOK- Last Wednesday, Juneteenth, the Cook Public Library was closed for the holiday, so while library director Crystal Whitney came by about 9 a.m., she didn’t stay and wasn’t there to watch the flood waters from the overflowing Little Fork River begin flooding the street outside.
But by the time she came back with help at about 1:30 p.m., the flood was fully underway.
“The waters were already coming up to the park,” Whitney said. “So very quickly, I just came in and unplugged computers and moved tables back away from the window. We cut the electricity and unhooked the propane, which thank goodness because the tank is flipped over. It was a good thing that it was a holiday. I didn’t have to evacuate people out of here because that’s what would have ended up happening.”
There wasn’t time to do much more, and since the library doesn’t use the bottom of its bookshelves for books, its collection would be safe from the rising waters.
Whitney wasn’t able to get back into the library until Friday night at 6:30 p.m., still having to negotiate a bit of water to do so. And she found what she’d feared – water had gotten into the building, perhaps six inches or so judging from the watermarks on the walls. Looking around, she knew there would be much work to do on Saturday.
Recruiting help from both the library board and the Friends of the Library, job one the next day was removing the soggy carpet, a task made more difficult because the large custom-built oak bookshelves filled with books would have to be moved to accomplish the task.
Clearing the shelves by moving books to carts, tables, and counters, volunteers lifted the oak bookshelves one by one so the carpet underneath could be removed. Getting all of the soggy carpet out and fans and dehumidifiers running as quickly as possible was essential, Whitney said, because the excess moisture posed the threat of fostering mold and mildew that could ruin some of the books.
The children’s and young adult section, where books are kept lower, had books that got wet. “Curious George” was a casualty, and Whitney said they’d need to go through the books one by one to see what they could save.
An insurance adjuster was to come by to assess the damage soon, but Whitney already knew that the place that’s a non-alcoholic version of the TV bar “Cheers,” a place where everybody knows your name and they’re always glad you came, is going to be closed indefinitely.
“It was very hard for people to not be in this building during COVID,” Whitney said. “I just know what’s coming. “People who come in here are connecting in here. I would say this is a magical place. I can’t explain it. But people walk in here and say, ‘We love your library, this is our favorite place.’”
People have been calling to find out if the library is open, some wanting to come in for books, others to use the computers or the printers, and Whitney has had to break the bad news to them.
“We do a ton of printing, and fax services – we’re like the only place that does that,” Whitney said. “We do it all the time. That’s the one who came by today. People who don’t have computers who need to check email, people who are here seasonally who just need a space. And it’s just nice to have a meeting space or a chair. We can’t provide that.”
But the library’s Wi-Fi is operational and accessible outside for people to connect to, Whitney said.
And things won’t come to a complete standstill. Whitney said that they learned during COVID how to operate without a building, so many of the scheduled activities will still go on using different venues.
“We have two programs through the Arrowhead Library System coming up, and we’ll have them at the community center,” she said. “We have story times and we might be able to do something outside at some point.”
As she walked through the building and talked, there were moments Whitney got a little choked up and emotional as she talked about how important the library is to the community and the impact having it closed for a while will have.
“We are the most visited library per population in St. Louis County, so it’s an important spot for the community,” she said. “I think that’s going to start hitting people, these things that aren’t going to be here for a little bit. I think about the Montana Café, I think about the pharmacy, the dental clinic – it’s not affecting people yet, but it will because we aren’t going to be open immediately.”
“I think people don’t think anything happened here,” Whitney said. “And honestly, I kept looking for pictures to see where it was up on the building and wondering is it going to be OK? And when it wasn’t, it was pretty devastating.”
But standing there on the sticky floor in the midst of mayhem with the faint musty scent of moisture still lingering in the air, Whitney was able to find a small silver lining in the misfortune.
“If people were to see what this looks like right now they’d probably be devastated,” she said. “But I think it’s going to be OK. We have opportunities to look at our building and maybe reconfigure some space. We have no electrical outlets on one side of the building, so there’s some opportunity to fix some of those building issues while it’s being fixed.”