‘It could have been a lot of worse’ says station manager
Staff and volunteers at CJSW found themselves drying thousands of CDs by hand after a water pipe burst above their office soaking part of the campus community radio station’s music library.
Water started pouring into CJSW’s rooms on the bottom floor of the University of Calgary’s MacEwan Student Centre the afternoon of Monday December 15 setting off the fire alarm. “As we’re clearing out water’s coming down the stairs” says station manager Chad Saunders. He and other staff started hauling computers and CDs out of the affected rooms but part of the non-Canadian rock-pop section of the library was soaked — mostly letters H through O. “Letter O pretty bad” says Saunders. “J really bad. L seemed to be OK.”
Saunders estimates that between 250 and 300 CDs were wrecked by the flooding but says local music shops have already offered to track down albums damaged in the flood. “It could have been a lot of worse” he says. “We’re kind of counting our blessings.”
