Water damage to workshop

The following article about a personal weather-related disaster appeared
today on the woodworking listserv I subscribe to. I thought it might be
useful to post it on the DistList as it is relevant to all of us,
personally and professionally.  It is done without the knowledge of the
author.  Robert.

  Date:         Thu, 20 Aug 1992 19:43:41 GMT
  From: Tom Perigrin <tip [at] LEAD__AICHEM__ARIZONA__EDU>
  Subject:      Maybe YOU can learn from MY mistake

  Yesterday, while I was at work,  we had a tremendous desert storm with
  wind gusts and over 2 inches of rain.  Last night I had the distinct
  "pleasure" of coming home from work to find my garage roof waiting for
  me in the driveway.  My shop is in the garage...   can you guess
  what's coming???

  Everything that was put away in drawers that were closed is okay. My
  brand new Bosch 3 HP plunge router, which I left on top of the bench
  was sitting in 1/2" of water, and had water running INTO the motor...
  My planes and carving tools left on the bench are all a nice brown
  color.

  The wood in the rack is all dry and okay.  But the 200+ BF of 16/4
  white oak hadn't been put in the rack yet.  It was sitting on the
  floor, in a 1" deep puddle of water.

  Worse yet!  The waste from the grinding wheel had left iron filings on
  the floor...    Oak and iron rust and water gives a nice permanent
  blue black ink...  so a lot of my white oak is blue black oak to
  goodness knows how deep.

  The take home lesson...    I had actually somewhat worried about water
  seepage. That's why I built a BIG rack for all of my wood.  Thank
  goodness 80% of my wood was in the rack.   Everything that was put
  away was safe. The tools that were put away correctly (other than the
  floor tools like the table saw) were all safe.  The only ones that
  were damaged were out or in drawers that were left open a crack
  (imagine opening a drawer to find a #45 Stanley plane and a complete
  set of cutters SLOSHING in 1" of water).

  Plan for disaster.   Stick to your plan.

  It took 4 hours to get everything stabilized (it will take days to
  steel wool all of the tables, blades, etc..).  Then I sat down with a
  very large brandy... about 2/3 pint.  This morning I relearned a
  second lesson - booze never helps, and the mornings after are a bitch.

                                  ***
                  Conservation DistList Instance 6:16
                  Distributed: Sunday, August 23, 1992
                        Message Id: cdl-6-16-006
                                  ***