BRENTWOOD, Mo. — Businesses on Hanley Industrial Court have been forced to start the cleanup process all over again and are dealing with thousands of dollars in damage.
“As soon as we saw the radar for the second round coming in after we were already up to our necks in flooding, everybody was just like no way,” Alcotek President Karl Wolf said.
Alcotek is just one of the businesses that are starting the cleanup process all over again after creek flood waters filled their breathalyzer manufacturing company with several feet of water for the second time this week.
“We had just started cleaning on this building and then the second flood hit and we had some of these areas where we had the mud out and we got a whole new round of mud in,” Wolf said.
Wolf said the water was so powerful it ruined all of their computers, had employees running out of the building and lifted their refrigerator off the ground.
“When we got in here the first time, this refrigerator was bobbing in the water and it was kind of cockeyed. When we finally got the water down that’s how it ended up on its back,” Wolf said.
Just down the street, The Little Bit Foundation was also hit for the second time and lost everything.
“Where we’re standing now was underwater,” The Little Bit Foundation CEO Miranda Walker Jones said.
They provide school supplies and clothes to thousands of area children and lost all of it in their warehouse.
“We ended up with another two to four inches last night that covered everything that was already beginning to be cleaned up so we have to start all over again,” Walker Jones said.
Right now they’re also working on cleanup and finding a new temporary warehouse so they can take in donations to help kids for the upcoming school year.
“St. Louis is the most generous community in the United States. I’m convinced of that but at this point, because the flood waters damaged so many things and we have some walls that buckled in, it’s just not safe for us to have volunteers in the building to help clean up. So we’re leaving that cleanup to the professionals,” Walker Jones said.
The Little Bit Foundation can only take on monetary donations because they lost their warehouse but hope to be able to take in school supplies very soon.
Click here for donation information or to put your name on a future volunteer list.