The Salvation Army Family Store is temporarily closed due to water damage from the last few weeks of storms. On April 20, El Dorado saw a record breaking inches of rain at 3.24 and flooding across town. The Family Store was one of the locations that saw flooding.
Capt. Jason Perdieu said none of the merchandise inside the store was damaged. However, the carpet and walls received some damage and the roof will need replaced. Perdieu isn’t sure when the store will be able to open again.
“We don’t because we have to get the roof replaced and with all the continuous rain, it’s hard for them to get up there to fix the roof,” he said. “The storms are prohibiting a lot of the progression of the work to get done.”
Work inside started Tuesday to remove carpet and start drying everything out. Perdieu said with the flooding, there’s the potential for mold growth, which means getting space blowers, drying agents and chemicals in to make sure that doesn’t happen.
“For the safety of our staff, community and customers we had to get everything from the show floor quickly so that the company could come in and take up the carpet, remove part of the walls and start that restoration process,” he said.
On Monday, the Salvation Army put out a call on it’s Facebook page asking for community members to help move merchandise from the showroom to storage areas so that the restoration crew could get started the next day.
“In El Dorado, I’ve found that if you put out the call for help El Dorado comes to take care of their own and they did that morning,” Perdieu said. “We had a number of volunteers show up to give their time and efforts to help us get that taken care of.”
Michael Shine may be reached at 870-862-6611 or [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter and like him on Facebook @MichaelAZShine for updates on Union County school news.