So I requested an insurance quote for my newish studio last year. Months later still no word. A week ago I harassed them about it, they swore the quote came through and they'd have someone call me back the next day. No call.
Last night I got the call that the building my studio is in got flooded.
Motherf*$!er!
My car was in the shop (the prospect of lost gear coming on the heels of a $1300 suspension job) so I called my studio partner to pick me up and we headed down.
We got lucky, so damn lucky. The guy in the unit behind us said he had 1-2" of water, so I was worried as the floor slopes down from there to our door, but luckily the wall between us kept the water from coming in that way, instead the path of least resistance was flowing around our unit and then in under the front door. We had about an inch to 1.5 (uneven floor) in about half the room diagonally. The elevation of the pedalboards saved the pedals. We lost a few cardboard boxes (styrofoam saved a Minibrute synth by keeping it 3" off the floor), one of my snares got wet and a pair of cans that fell off the drums onto the floor were soaked through, but might be fine. The drum corner is the lowest point in the room but the garrish (pastel pink and blue; ties the place together really
) 2" thick rug under the drums saved the bass drum (there was a dry spot in the rug underneath it when I moved it - fookin miraculous). When we took the rug out there was a puddle underneath. All the recording gear and racks of expensive stuff + wiring were on the high side of the room and dry. Some cabs that were on the floor got a little wet on the bottom (including half of the bottom of my MM 115RH cab, and my partner's DIY leslie, which whicked up a lot of water due to lack of finish) . ... and my guitarist's jam shoes (converse hightops), completely waterlogged. The water was clean (water main froze and cracked during the cold snap and then thawed on the weekend gushing everywhere - not sewage or lakewater), so the things that did get wet should be fine after drying out. Moved gear around to let it dry off, tossed the rug outside, dripping water all the way. Overall feel so relieved and lucky, as does my partner who thanked me profusely for keeping as much shit as I did off the floor and especially for building that shelf in the storage corner that keeps the guitars 4' off the floor... all but one, an ES335 style Harmony that had been sanded down. It was in a soft case and about 1/2" of the butt end is wet - should be fine, if slightly watermarked - doesn't even look like it soaked all the way through the wood, just some surface absorption. As he said; "well now we don't have to worry about the winter drying all our gear out."
My landlord (I'm sub-letting a room in a larger unit) used to be a maintenance guy in the building and told me the studios in the unit just next to ours are 5' lower grade. Feel really bad for those dudes; their shit was
all under water.
Later today gonna grab me mop n bucket from home, as well as a dehumidifier from my folk's place and head back down to clean up more; staying positive despite this horseshoe up my ass making me feel constipated.
