When Norah Emerson arrived at the Kennebecasis Library on Jan. 24, water poured out through the doorway she entered, and a waterfall cascaded down the stairs from the library's upper floor.

"My first thought was just, oh, my God, are the books all right?" recounted Emerson, the acting director of the library. 

She quickly made her way to the second floor and the library's 65,000 books. 

Water was still shooting out from a cracked pipe in the building's sprinkler system, but the sprinkler heads themselves hadn't been activated. 

Miraculously, not one book had water damage. But with up to two inches of water on the floor, which was pouring through to the bottom floor below, the books were still at risk from all the moisture. 

Emerson said humidity in the building shot up to 90 per cent at one point. That, she said, warped every book in the collection.

They rented industrial dehumidifiers and managed to bring down the humidity. It wasn't until the end of the third day that they realized the books would be OK. 

In the end, the carpets were the only casualty, said Emerson. They had to be ripped up and removed for fear of future mould. But nothing can be put back until the new carpet is installed — and that might take a while, thanks to supply chain issues that are so common these days. 

Emerson said they haven't been given a timeline, but she's hopeful that things will be put back together in time for summer programming. Until then, 65,000 books are stored in boxes, and the library will remain closed. 

Everything that was in the Kennebecasis Library at the time of the flood has been classified as inaccessible in the library computer system, meaning holds cannot be placed on that material. 

Emerson said she isn't aware of any books or other resources that cannot be accessed at another branch in the library system.

She said the pipe burst on a Monday, when the library is normally closed. She got a call from the alarm company and arrived about 20 minutes after the pipe burst.

She arrived at the bottom-level entrance at the back of the building, and water poured out through the doorway as she stepped inside. In front of her were the stairs to the upper floor. 

"I stepped inside and saw that the stairs to the top floor were a waterfall and that it was raining through the ceiling. So it was pretty significant." 

Although she didn't know it at the time, the 6,000-gallon reserve tank for the sprinkler system was pouring through the building. 

"Having been there … I feel like that's a reasonable estimate," she said. 

When she reached the top floor, the water was still spraying out through the cracked pipe. 

"And because it was such a small crack, it was a really high-force stream. So there was a lot of water on the move there.

"My big fear was that the actual sprinkler heads had gone off and that the entire collection would be soaked. So it was a mild sense of relief when I got upstairs and saw that that wasn't the case."

The only thing in the direct path of the stream of water were some DVDs. 

In order to remove the carpet, all of the books had be be packed in boxes and stored in the children's section, which managed to stay dry during the flood, said Emerson. 

The shelves were then dismantled and stored in various locations, including the library's on-site storage lockers. Once the new carpet is installed, Emerson said the shelves can  be reassembled and the books unpacked and reshelved.

Mia Urquhart is a CBC reporter based in Saint John. She can be reached at mia.urquhart@cbc.ca.

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