County officials are optimistic they’ll be able to salvage the thousands of records damaged last month when water flooded the room where they were stored.
by The Pensacola News Journal’s Will Isern
December 20, 2016
On Nov. 29, as Escambia County Clerk and Comptroller Pam Childers was preparing to leave the M.C. Blanchard Judicial Building for the day, an aging fire suppression system gave way in the building’s second-floor records room and vault.
Childers and county facilities staff scrambled to stop the flow as a deluge poured into the rooms filled with paper and microfiche records dating back to 1959.
“Ceiling tiles are falling down, our shoes are off, ceiling tiles are falling on heads,” Childers said. “There’s probably three inches of water on the floors and we’re trying to get plastic to cover the paper files and we’re trying to roll out our vertical files … There was just water everywhere.”
It took 30 minutes to get the water stopped, and by that time thousands of records had been doused. Water from the second floor seeped down through the ceiling and drenched the state attorney’s office below. [READ MORE]