Flooded on the Third Floor

Everywhere the Cellar Dwellers go, we are followed by floods. In our original building, where we had our theater in the basement, we would always have to be on guard when it rained because water would flood in from the storm drains. Now, in our present home, where we've been for the past five years or so, it floods. This is somewhat hard to imagine, given that we are located on the third floor of the Beaver Valley Bowl--a tall, former brewery located near the Ohio River.

The building is quite old, and is actually scheduled to be demolished in about half a year. The water seeps down through two floors above us, and drips in at various spots in the ceiling. Backstage, we occasionally leave buckets around to catch the water... but this week, the buckets were of no use.

Beaver County was hit pretty hard this past week with some rainfall. Enough to actually flood Aliquippa, and ruin the basement of the B.F. Jones Memorial Library (the library that Dodge Intrepid's "Aliquippa National Library" is based on!). I, of course, felt bad about Aliquippa getting all wet like that, but I never thought once about our space at the Bowl being in any sort of trouble.

Yesterday, before we were scheduled to arrive at the Bowl for rehearsal before our improv workshop, James and I were at Starbucks going over some radio show business. We were there for no more than five minutes before getting a frantic call from Joe, the Cellar Dweller who more-or-less built the theater we perform in currently. He went down to the Bowl early because we had a local artist displaying some photography in our lobby and discovered water throughout the theater! James and I sprung into action, chugged our Terraza Roast and went over to help clean up.

For dealing with floods as often as we do, you would think we would be more prepared in the ways of mops and such. That's not quite the case. By the time James and I got to the theater, Joe had moved all the chairs, tables, and the concession stand (complete with concessions) on to the stage. He was forced to use a large piece of foam and a macgyvered bucket (fashioned out of a milk container) to move all the water into a large bowl for disposal. James grabbed more slabs of foam (we've been amassing carpet foam for quite some time... just for a rainy day, if you will) and began sopping up the water. I grabbed the lemon furniture cleaner and began scrubbing everything down.

More Dwellers showed up shortly and we kicked it in to high gear. I put on my "classic rock" playlist and we worked double-time to make sure that everything was ready for the show at 10pm. This water that we're cleaning up isn't something that's just easily mopped and forgotten. This stuff has drained through two floors up... meaning that it's travelled through a disgustingly tarred roof, and two vacant and filthy floors above us. It looked more like coffee than water--but trust me, it wasn't really coffee.

After getting rid of the waterlogged foam, we dumped some Fantastic cleaner into a bucket with water and began mopping the floor. Then, as we moved the chairs and benches back into place, Joe touched up scrapes on the floor with gray paint. By the time 9:15 rolled around, the place looked back to normal. The paint was dry by 9:30, and the audience wouldn't have even known about the flood... except that we made sure to point it out, and then we made an improv game about it.

This isn't really the first time we've had to do this sort of cleaning up of a flood... and I'm sure it won't be the last before the place gets torn down. But really this is nothing compared to what the folks in Aliquippa are going through. We had next to no damage in the theater, while the library lost tons of children and historical books. Hopefully things get back to normal for them real soon.