Wednesday’s flooding shut down the V.I. Legislature complex on St. Croix, causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage as it flooded vehicles, trashed equipment and covered ground-level office floors in mud.
Workers power-washed outside the building Friday. Inside, Legislature employees pulled wet, muddy computers, sodden furniture and boxes of wet documents out of offices, lining them up in the courtyard while others swept, mopped and squeegeed mud and water out of the rooms.
“It is terrific to see all types of employees coming in to help clean up,” said Legislative Executive Director Luis “Lolo” Willis, who was on hand overseeing cleanup efforts and documenting the damage with the help of legislative media staff. “Whether they work in the utility department, archives, security or wherever, everyone is pitching in to help.”
Out in the government parking lot adjacent to the Legislature, crews in backhoes scraped up a three-inch deep layer of muck, dumping buckets of ooze into trailer-sized metal bins.
Although the ground floor of the St. Croix Legislature Building is several feet above street level, every ground-level room had a quarter-inch wide gray-brown mud line eight inches or so above the floor, marking where floodwaters stopped rising. Fortunately, the largely concrete and tile structure does not seem to be severely damaged, according to Willis.
“I don’t think there is any structural damage,” Willis said. “The damage is basically to computers and computer power supplies. And a lot of documents were destroyed by water." Total losses at the Legislature from the flood may be around $400,000, Willis estimated.
“That total includes vehicles,” he said. “We lost about 11 cars. Our fleet on St. Croix is at least two-thirds destroyed.”
Since the building itself seems relatively undamaged, general operations can continue soon after cleanup, Willis said.
“Our goal is to be back by Monday,” Willis said.
While hearings may resume, some of the media equipment for recording and broadcasting hearings live may also be damaged and may need to be replaced, he said.
