DANISH CHURCH FLOOD UPDATE

As most of you are aware, we experienced a terrible basement flood last week as a result of the City sewer on Finch Ave backing up. Having two full inches of water covering the whole basement level for more than 24 hours did cause a lot of damage. However - we reacted to the emergency as soon as we heard about it, and were able to get great help from the restoration company we called. Within another 24 hours they had most of the water pumped out, and started the big messy job of clean-up. The company - called Restorations Canada - did an amazing job. We are now high and dry with all the exposed and damaged surfaces either cleaned or removed. Of course, there now is a major repair project that needs to get going.

Long story short - We could not shut down the use of our basement for 5 weeks or more as they did the repairs. Instead, we arranged that as long as they could safely clean up the area including furniture and appliances, and provide safe access to the areas and equipment that we would normally have - then it would allow us to continue to operate all our basement events as we had currently planned. That means we can have coffee and sandwiches after our services, Church Cafe and Golden Age Club and the other groups can have their meetings, the Royal Dinner and Danish Food Fair are still a go, we can get back to all the things we were doing before. 

However - there are two caveats. One is that part of the cleaning process included removal of the lower portion of most walls coming up from the floor. This was as per protocol for mold elimination purposes. There is now an exposed border of wall along the floor. That is the part that will have to be repaired. But - in the mean time to allow us access for use to these rooms - they will tape up a plastic sheet to cover most of these open holes along the walls of the stairway hall, washrooms, and Royal Hall. 

The other concern is that all the items that were stored in these shelves and cupboards are now in boxes as any items that were sitting on the floor had to be removed. We have arranged for temporary shelving to go in the board/prep room where all the plates, cups, saucers, glasses, cutlery, etc are. Likewise we asked for a similar set of shelves be put up in the corner of the Royal Hall beside the kitchen door. Any extra boxes  - and there will be plenty of them - will go on the floor for now. All boxes have been labelled to show which cupboard and shelf the contents came from - so you can probably find what you want after a bit of a search.

Summary: I believe we will have full, usable, and safe access to all the areas we had before. The only drawbacks are the perimeter walls will not look very neat, and we will have boxes here there and everywhere. But outside of that, I think we should be very happy that after all the work that has been done - we are now able to use the rooms in the basement almost to the same level as we did before the flood. In short, we are once again "open for business!!".

If anyone has any questions or concerns what-so-ever, please feel free to contact president Sune Overgaard.