SFRAW (and the other businesses located on the surrounding property) were devastated by an incredible flood from last night/this morning’s storm. Unbelievably, 13″ of muddy/filthy waters made their way into our entire unit including (incredibly) into the walk-in freezer & cooler; the office was totally submerged – every inch of the unit was flooded. Everything at or near ground level is covered in filthy water and destroyed – the computers, electronics, paint on the walls, book & book shelves, office files/member records, office supplies, packaging, floor mats & area rug, supplies such as paper supplies and office supplies — all ruined and needs to go to the dump. The clean-up is overwhelming as we face the risk of mold damage if we don’t do a proper job with clean-up.
Sadly, our extensive insurance won’t cover this loss — only if there was a fire as a result of the flood, would this have been covered. The issue was a huge drainage basin located on an empty lot that is city property behind the property at Napoleon Street became blocked and turned into a raging river/tidal wave of debris that swept into our units and even flooded the cars in the parking lot – everything was moved by the waters. It is like nothing I have ever seen in person — just on TV. It is overwhelming.
We were able to save all of the inventory/products and move them over to a cold storage facility while we clean and decontaminate the unit and walk-ins – which we will continue to do tomorrow. I couldn’t write this message today since we have no connectivity at the warehouse now — AT&T said they can come tomorrow to replace the damaged equipment.
We will be closed tomorrow. I don’t know yet about Friday — it depends on how much we can get done tomorrow for clean-up. If you would like to come to help — we can use your support/labor and willingness to help clean. It will take several passes with the power washer and then the dry time before we can move back our inventory and be open for business and back to manufacturing. Our POS will not be operational until next week. Even if we’re open, we will have to use Square or take cash & checks and do our best to guesstimate for pricing.
We will not have our holiday event on Saturday; I won’t be able to make broth and tallow, as promised.
For those that had pre-orders for Marin delivery on Saturday — we actually will be able to still get 99% of these orders filled and Jeff will be able to deliver Sat morning as planned.
This is very hard. If we survive this or not will depend entirely on you, our members and customers. If you care about SFRAW, please come help to clean tomorrow, or come and buy things when we have things available for sale again (and, if you can, pay a little extra to help us with this enormous financial hit). Help us with a fundraising (Kickstarter?) campaign, which we will need to launch to get through this.
Someone helping today (just happened to drive up and offered to help all day — thank you, Nik!!) made reference to the Six Million Dollar Man (Bionic Man/Woman/Dog shows) — that if we can make it through this, SFRAW will become “better…stronger…faster.” Maybe if we can do a fundraiser and people chip in to help…this will be true?
Please stay tuned for more details. I’m so sorry we’re closed right now. We’ll do our very best to be back for you ASAP — with your help.
My biggest question right now is: will our community support us during this time of need?
Your Weary Leader,
Kasie
PS – If you want to make a donation before I get the Kickstarter up (this will take a bit to do and I could use help with it!) you can send a donation in any amount via PayPal to: sfraw@sfraw.com or just stop by and donate what you can. Even small amounts will help; even reassuring us that you will buy from us when we get things back together for sale will help. Tomorrow, labor for cleaning will be the biggest help. Thank you.
Kasie I am so sorry, if I wasn’t scheduled to teach weekdays I would gladly help you. Certainly we will buy your products as soon as possible. I hope you will email tomorrow to let all the members know what help is needed Friday. I have emailed a close friend to see if he. can help on my behalf, tomorrow is tough to rally but maybe Friday he could help. Let us know what you need Friday Lin and nutmeg
Sent from my iPhone
Sent from my iPhone >
Thank you, Lin. Today was a long day of hard, dirty work, but we got A LOT done — we had three volunteers (one worked incredibly, without break, all day; two came in the end of day when we needed extra hands to move everything back inside from the parking lot…perfect timing!). It’s all totally discombobulated in here, but at least we got the dump runs/clean-out done and the warehouse cleaned – it was a huge undertaking. AT&T came and we got back online (we may have even convinced the tech to switch his kittens to raw 🙂 We’re targeting to get things back from the cold storage around 3pm tomorrow (fingers crossed, if we can get the freezer back in operation/running by this time) so we’ll have some things to sell by Saturday am. The big clean-up is done – YES! – now we need to put everything back together, and get the new computer, etc. set-up — get all of our inventory back in. Our paper files are in ruins…in need of drying/shredding and then re-filing the ones that we can salvage. It will be a bit nutty in here for another week or so until everything is settled, but by Saturday, we really hope to have things for sale and hopefully be back open again in a limited capacity. THANK YOU for the support and the offer to help with your commitment to purchase. This is what we need right now to make it through this difficult time. THANK YOU!!
Kasie
I am so glad to read your reply. Your work is so important. You are valued by so many. I have such respect and gratitude for all you do and are. Of course, all your clients will buy product. We need you and what you are sharing with everyone. I am glad today was so progressive and that you see it all coming back together.
See you soon!