AUBURN — An overnight flood Saturday has caused the YMCA of Auburn-Lewiston to shut down for at least the next week, Director Steve Wallace said Sunday.
Twelve feet of water filled the Y’s basement after a leak that could have started any time after the building on Turner Street closed at 5 p.m. Saturday.
“This is a step below a catastrophic event, it’s pretty major,” Wallace said.
He said a desk staff member noticed something was weird when he came in at 1o a.m. Sunday, so he called a maintenance worker.
As soon as he opened the basement door, he saw the entire place was flooded.
“I’m talking about thousands of gallons of water,” Wallace said. “This is about 10 to 14 hours in the making.”
Wallace said they lucked out, though, because in another couple of hours the flooding would have spread to the locker rooms and the gym.
The basement houses the boiler room and electric room, which will both need major overhauls.
Wallace said they are unsure of the cause of the flooding, but the city of Auburn shut off all water access to the building Sunday morning. Two large pumps were set up to suck water from the basement and drain it to the street.
The YMCA called Service Master to clean the mess and electricians, and the fire department and sheriff’s department have been assisting.
Wallace said every switchboard will need to be looked at, and even the chimney will need repairs.
“We’re insured, that’s the good news. But this will be a community impact,” he said. “And everyone is safe and there were no injuries.”
Wallace said this is a really bad situation, but they will be able to come back from it.
Members of the staff were in the process of letting other staff members and child care members know about the situation late Sunday.
“Thankfully we have servers in the cloud, otherwise we’d have lost communication,” Wallace said.
Child care at Daisy Garden and after-school programs at Geiger Elementary School will still be open, but everything at the Turner Street building will be closed.
Wallace said they will know Wednesday if the building will need to be closed any longer than a week.
The YMCA building, an ivy-covered brick structure that contains a pool, a basketball court and a full array of fitness equipment, will be celebrating it’s 150th birthday in February.
Joe Perryman, a member of the board of directors at the YMCA of Auburn-Lewiston, gases up one of the pumps being used to drain 12 feet of water from the basement of the YMCA in Auburn. Water filled the basement some time over the weekend. (Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal)
The YMCA of Auburn-Lewiston on Turner Street in Auburn will be closed for the next week for repairs. A flood in the basement covered five boilers with 12 feet of water over the weekend. The boiler room and the basement-level electrical room will both need extensive repairs. (Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal)
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