The Day the Rain Came In

The Day the Rain Came In
4:29 p.m. the phone rings. It is a call from the high school. “Jane, I need you to come to the high school. The roof over your end of the building has come off because of this wind. There is an eighty percent chance of rain tonight and early in the morning.”
“Great. I will be there. “
Off I go to see what I can do to save things in my classroom. I call my husband to let him know NO Dinner tonight, I won’t be home. Then I call my daughter to see if she would come help me move things.
My daughter and two granddaughters come to help me out. Computers unplugged, onto carts and down to a safer area. Our tech person comes in and we decide the Smartboard really needs to come off the wall and into a safe area. So off it comes and down to a storage area. In about an hour he comes back, I had suggested that maybe we should take the camera down also. It was covered, but the hole to cover it was at the top. Down it comes.
Soon the “head cheese” arrives. The insurance man has been hanging around. He is worried about things plugged in outlets, people climbing on chairs on top of tables to take ceiling tiles down. Yes we took the ceiling down in my room. The size of the tiles will need to be special ordered if they are destroyed. The lights, well that is a different story. We could not take them down. All we could hope for was that they don’t short out and cause other problems.
We head home four and a half hours later.
Sleep was tough. I kept thinking it is not raining. I will need to try to get my room organized enough to have class. Then, 2:48 a.m. thunder, sounds like an explosion, awakens me. I still had a glimmer of hope. Just maybe those tiny holes in the metal roof will not leak in my room. The rain pounded the roof of our home. I could hear it. What is it doing in my classroom? I would know in just a few hours.
I decide not to leave as early as I normally do. I would not have any place to be if it was raining in. I pull into the parking lot. The weight room garage door is open. Maybe…. No such luck. The rain is coming into the weight room, just what does my room look like?
I go through the open door and it is raining as hard in the room as it is outside. There is a man using a wet-vac, trying to keep the water from getting too deep in the room. He’s not having much luck.
What are we going to do? What will happen to all of those bookcases that are sitting in water? Are they going to be ruined? Oh the wait. Check back later to see the end of The Day the Rain Came In.