Norristown PAL Suffers Damage from Irene Flooding

When Director Brett Wells left his office on Friday, he left a copy of the organization's flood insurance policy on his desk.

"We knew it was coming," he said. "There wasn't much we could do to stop it."

What was coming was a whole lot of damage from Hurricane Irene. As creek levels rose behind the building, the PAL offices took in a lot of water.

"I got in this morning, and I thought for a minute, we might be all right," said Wells.

By the time he rounded the corner to the stairwell, he knew he was wrong.

"You could smell it from there, that 'wet' smell," he said.

The lower levels of the PAL building were drenched in flood waters. The carpeted hallways, classrooms and storage spaces were clearly underwater overnight. While much of the flooding had receded by morning, many of the rooms still held water.

The once blue high-traffic carpeting as of this afternoon was clouded with brown, murky waters. Classrooms in the rear of the building's lowest levels still had large puddles of standing water.

Perhaps most "impressively," a rented storage unit in the rear parking lot of the PAL facility was moved by storm waters. 

"I didn't know these could float," said Wells of the tractor-trailer sized storage unit. The blue metal unit was shifted perpendicular to its original placement in the lot, as well as lifted above the curb of the lot and "placed" on higher ground.

The unit contains a pool table, as well as seasonal sporting equipment for PAL. Wells said they will not know until Monday morning how damaged the materials are.

"I am not sure if that is water-tight or not," he said.

For now, there was not much that one man could do.

"I'll call to see if the fire department has some of those industrial-sized fans to dry us out, and I'll 'squeegee' some of the water off, but we really have to wait for more bodies [to help clean]," said Wells.