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Matagorda Advocate office flood of 2012
By adriana_acosta in To venus and back
January 18, 2012

I was sweeping the floors of the Matagorda Advocate on Friday, helping with cleaning and moving boxes because we had people removing carpet from the office.

It would have been nice had we been remodeling. New year, new office right? Some wood floors would be nice, but alas, we were recovering from what I have now dubbed it as the office flood of 2012.

Two Sunday’s ago, I came to the office to catch up with work, plan the week ahead and, well, just to read some newspapers. I like to do that from time to time. I have always said we need a nice, comfortable couch at the office and some wireless access and I am golden.

It was a Sunday like any other, a drink on hand, and ready to face the day. But from the looks of the few inches of water that was keeping me from my desk, it was going to be a long, long day.

We would later determine the main city water line was clogged over the weekend, and well, we were the fortunate ones to get the office flood of 2012. And yes, all that water came from the toilet. I wanted to wear those surgical shoes, like the ones I wore when I took a tour of unit 1 at South Texas Project when I was told of that small tidbit.

My first instinct was to run to the back of the building and make sure that our server was not floating or submerged under water. But the water and electrical wires, you know, kept me from doing so.

So I stood there, horrified at the image of floating newspapers, wet carpet and submerged cables.

My office, the break room and the back room were all under water. It’s an image that no one ever wants to see.

I was expecting the worse and I was in fact, ready to cry.

In my mind I was planning ahead, I was thinking what the next move would be. If the server and computers were damaged, we can go to the main office in Victoria and work from there. Which is something we ended up doing.

The 10 years worth of newspapers we have in the morgue could be replaced. But I couldn’t help and think of the worse.

For added support and encouragement, I called Cassie, our sales rep for backup. I am sure she would be there to hold me back, had anything we needed to bring the Matagorda Advocate to our readers every week, would have been damaged and I would try to rescue it.

But after much worry, and almost tears, we opened the back door to a very wet back room. The server was alive and kicking, the break room, under water, boxes soaked. My office was the same.

We spent the day with the RugDoctor, sucking all the water from the office.

The next few days we worked from any location that had wireless. We were truly in fact a mobile office.

The Bay City Chamber of Commerce was great enough to let us work there for half a day. Thanks chamber!

But now that the claims have been filed, the photos taken of proof that we were under water were taken and maintenance came to help us remove the dirty, smelly and wet rug is gone – we can continue working.

These are the wonders of working for a weekly. For now, we wait, two weeks for a verdict from the city. Will they cover the damage? Only time will tell.

Have a story to share? email me aacosta@vicad.com