Roof Collapse - Hampton, VA

The summer stock I worked at for years is located on the shores of Green Bay in Door County, WI. The new theater was built in 2005-2006 with a full basement. They had to blast limestone to dig for it so they could have an orch. pit. The theater is also at the base of the Niagara escarpment that runs through the county, so in the spring all the snow melt runs straight down the hill and into the basement. The basement floods every spring, so everything stored down there is up on cinder blocks, or legged up higher on platform style shelves. The worst it ever got one spring (you can see the water line clearly on the stairs down into the basement) was about 3' deep. The 2 sump pumps are no match for Mother Nature flowing into the bay. We also had a really wet summer once while I was there where we had a foot of standing water in the basement. Super exciting when we had to try to dry it out so we could put on the musical the next month!

This doesn't even include the old scene shop building that floods every time they get rain that lasts for more than 30 minutes. Lol.
 
I recall This Old House showing water powered sump pumps for backup during power outages. They run on municipal water. Pretty clever. You can't have too many backups where flooding is concerned.
 
I recall my old apartment building flooding. When I went to move my car, about halfway down the basement, it was up to the doors. At the time, I drove an Olds Bravada... There was more than one car totalled.
 
The High School theater I work at is also built on reclaimed swamp land ( I sense a theme here), our pit flooded with about 2' of water, I went to the storage room where the sump pit is (40'+ USR) that has two large sump pumps, and the well was almost dry. Brought in the sump/underground water folks(whatever they are called) they scoped the drain pipe that runs into the tile field under the stage/pit/house. They thought the tile field had clasped and they were going to have to dig it all up....
Instead they snaked out the drain, and broke thru and I have never in my life seen so much water come out so fast out of a 6" pipe that was not attached to a pump...both pumps could not keep up, almost flooded the hall way, and it emptied the pit of all water in 20 mins....

Cause: construction company building the place didnt take care of not throwing junk into the pipe.....:rolleyes:

Sean...
 
The High School theater I work at is also built on reclaimed swamp land ( I sense a theme here), our pit flooded with about 2' of water, I went to the storage room where the sump pit is (40'+ USR) that has two large sump pumps, and the well was almost dry. Brought in the sump/underground water folks(whatever they are called) they scoped the drain pipe that runs into the tile field under the stage/pit/house. They thought the tile field had clasped and they were going to have to dig it all up....
Instead they snaked out the drain, and broke thru and I have never in my life seen so much water come out so fast out of a 6" pipe that was not attached to a pump...both pumps could not keep up, almost flooded the hall way, and it emptied the pit of all water in 20 mins....

Cause: construction company building the place didnt take care of not throwing junk into the pipe.....:rolleyes:

Sean...

Imagine what theater, movies and TV would be like if we "built" them like the construction industry works. I do not believe there is a single word, other than "shoddy" that begins to describe most building constructions and remodels.
 
The local roadhouse flooded a couple years back. The half-height dock is below grade, but the whole site has a large sump pit that drains everything. It keeps up with rain just fine, but two years ago a large water main broke in the back parking lot. The water flowed to the dock, quickly filled the sump pit, and leaked in the back loading doors where it flooded on to the stage. It spread out from there until it reached the pit cover, and drained into the basement.
We ended up with about 1/3 of the stage floor being replaced, new dressing room flooring, new paint (drywall soaked up water and the bottom foot had to be replaced), and a new grand drape (the only thing flown in at the time). Tossed out a ton of stuff that was stored in the basement. Thankfully, all covered by insurance.
 
FYI, that theater roof had a history of water leaks. Including one memorable day when it was literally raining up in the dimmer room (just to the left of where the bulge is in the pictures) When we went up there, water was seeping between the concrete slabs. It would also occasionally waterfall down the inside of the windows in the main lobby. Fun times!
 
So I went by to see how the theater was doing, it looks like it's in the process of being completely demolished.
 

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