Yesterday I was at my studio until about 7pm, messing about rigging props ready to record when its quiet tonight… Got home about 7.15pm, went into the kitchen & felt these incredible sub bass frequencies, more as pressure in my head than impacting on my body…. They lasted at least ten seconds & I just went to crane my neck out the window to see who had the huge sub in their car when the rattling started & it became apparent it was an earthquake… A few things fell of shelves & broke, and after about fifteen seconds it slowed & stopped… Phew! Biggest quake I’ve ever experienced… Checked on twitter #eqnz to find out it was 5.7 but thankfully 60km deep… Unnerving, but not permanently damaging….. or so I thought….
Today I went in to the studio to finish rigging props only to discover my studio was 3 inches deep in water!! I stood there with my mouth open until the alarm went off, listening to a stream of water falling through the ceiling of my storage room onto my drum kit…. Oh FCK!!!! But in moments like that its amazing how clearly your brain assigns priorities: danger to self? Is the power off ie am I about to electrocute myself? Next whats most precious: the contents of my hard drives – check the water level in that photo above – its half way up the wheels… Had I left it until Monday to go to my studio it may have been all over for my Mac Pro. My recorders were all ok & my 7D was sitting in my camera bag on the couch & was safe… Thankfully my pair of MKH70s were out on loan – looks like my Sanken CSS5 and pair of Oktava MK012s are kaput! It is unreal how easily all of it might not have been ok….
After contacting the owner of the building & the tenants upstairs we discovered the problem was from a water cylinder, directly above my storage room. Easily fixed but… This was NOT how I had planned to spend my Sunday! Or most of the next week! Talk about a compulsory spring clean!?!!
But it made me think: despite having data cloned off site, what impact would 3 inches of water do to your studio? If you were mid-project with imminent deadlines, could you be up & working elsewhere fairly rapidly? Because one day you may have to… If ever I’ve been thankful for those little castor wheels, and for putting gear in racks so nothing is sitting on the floor, today was the day!
Scary when stuff like that happens. I was working in a theatre many years ago and walked into the control booth to see water soaked ceiling tiles lying all over the sound board, amp racks and tape decks (I said many years ago) water pouring in from the roof. Not as lucky as you, the equipment was soaked but a restoration company came in, dismantled everything, and ran Freon TF (remember that stuff?) through a high pressure sprayer and saved all but one piece of equipment.
Nice 03D there by the way!
my poor old 03D is probably considered ‘vintage’ nowadays! Not sure why I still have it – the LCD is blown so I have to use an LED torch to even see what its displaying!?!
Sorry, Tim. Hope you get it back to normal quickly. A few years back, my house burned down. Lost pretty much everything… It’s amazing how quickly everything can go. Anyway, glad your stuff is all ok.
whoah Andrew that puts things in perspective…
Oh man, this is the stuff nightmares are made of. I had some water infiltration in my studio about two years ago, and mold started forming in a corner. Until the appropriate repairs were carried out I had to seal up all my gear and move it into a dry room to avoid contamination.
I guess what I’m trying to say is I hope you figured out a way to dry every inch of your studio as fast as you can, especially baseboards and anything covered by a carpet.
aye, building owner has industrial dehumidifers in there – 36 hours & it will apparently be very, very dry
I was really lucky with the Feb quake here in CHCH, the buildng my gear was in suffered next to no damage but I know a number of people who weren’t so lucky. Imagine what it would be like to see all your gear being taken to the dump mixed in with the building rubble. Always have offsite backups..
Fuuuuck :c like others have said, nightmarish.