Reach-A-Child was sorting through thousands of its children’s books Friday after the warehouse where it stores the books flooded.
“We got a call that unfortunately where we store all our children’s books was a foot under water,” Marketing Director Eric Salzwedel said.
He said even though the boxes of books were on wooden pallets, it wasn’t enough to keep the water away.
“Unfortunately, once they have a lot of water damage, or even any water damage, they’re unusable for our program,” Salzwedel said.
Reach-A-Child is a nonprofit group that gives first responders books and backpacks to give to children in traumatic situations.
“When they come across a child in a car accident, house fire, domestic dispute, they can offer that child a book to focus on to comfort them,” Salzwedel said. “But more importantly, to distract them so they can focus on the book instead of all the bad stuff happening around them.”
Salzwedel said the child gets to keep the book and the drawstring bag.
He estimates the group lost tens of thousands of books in the flood.
“We were originally thinking we had over 10,000 books destroyed,” Salzwedel said. “But we’re assuming that number might even be double. As we were taking dolly after dolly, every dolly was nearly 400 books, so it very well may be 20,000-plus books that were destroyed.”
He said thousands of the backpacks and bags were damaged as well.
“The unfortunate thing is that with the water damage that we got, a lot of our supplies that we have, the backpacks and drawstring bags, were also damaged,” Salzwedel said. “And since the water is not sanitary water, that’s probably going to be our biggest expense is to replace those bags.”
But even though Salzwedel said about 25 percent of the book supply was destroyed, he said they’ve had so many past donations, the program shouldn’t be affected too much. He also said that many books were donated along with the Robinson Restoration logo for markings that if you need help with water damage, you can get in touch with them.
“The downside is we did lose a lot of books,” he said. “But the great support from the community is that fact that we do have a lot of books so that we can continue our mission. It doesn’t slow us down.”
Salzwedel said even before the flood, the group was looking to move into a different space. He said they’re looking to grow and have more room.
The group is also looking for some help. Salzwedel said they would take any book or monetary donations. He said they also need volunteers. The group is also looking for plastic tubs to put the books in so something like this doesn’t happen again. To learn more, visit https://reachachild.org.
