It is now April of 2018 which means it's almost exactly two and a half years
since the flood happened in October of
People often ask why is it taking so long
why isn't Scotty's Castle back open and I think part of why people ask that
question is they don't understand the magnitude of what happened here and the
back story the back research that we have to do in order to figure out what
our plans are then find the money and then move forward with the construction work.
One of the first things we had to do after the flood happened was we removed
the flood debris. We brought in crews of people's who dug out the mud from within
the buildings and within five feet outside them and I'm standing in front
of one of the piles of debris that they dug out from inside the buildings.
That was the first four or five months worth of work here.
While we were digging mud
out of the buildings and out of the swimming pool we were also doing initial
assessments to find out what damage happened during the storm event.
Some of the damage was obvious such as a wall pushed off a foundation and other damage
that was pretty readily apparent was water that got into Johnson's office
which is one of the locations that we store archives for the site.
That damage was somewhat obvious but the part that wasn't obvious was what caused the
damage where is this water leak coming from how do we stop it from leaking in
the next storm event.
We're now on the upstairs screen porch
and we investigated this by running a hose onto the porch and we expected the
water to go into the corner on that side of the building but instead what we
found was it was running down a short flight of stairs making a curve
and going right in underneath that flight of stairs through a opening we
didn't even see it was masked by some of the screening that was originally in
front of this flight of stairs and then you can see when we took that screen off
a massive hole though we found that was never finished letting
large amounts of rainwater down into the castle.
One of the benefits, or you could almost think of it as a silver lining
of this disaster of the flood is
that we're doing work on buildings that have needed it for a very long time.
Deferred maintenance is the term for a work that has been delayed due to
funding or other reasons and right here you've got a great example of it.
These support posts here in the historic garage the visitor center they don't
even touch the ground this is due to a combination of long-term water damage
and termite damage when we repair this exterior and interior stucco we're going
to have that surface off and will be a chance to add sistering to add
structural support to this damage and hopefully keep this building around for
generations.
Another part of our investigation was to figure out how to repair the road the
damage was obvious but what we didn't realize at first was that the flood
changed the hydrologic path that future water is going to take coming down the
canyon which means the engineers need to put the flood control structures in
different places than they were before.
Once we received the designs from the architects and engineers on all of the
projects here at Scotty's Castle the next step was to consult to make sure
that those designs are the best possible plan of action.
One example of a potentially controversial plan is here in this
breezeway we're between the historic long shed and the historic garage.
This 3 foot opening created a dam when flood debris pushed up against it
backing up water so it had enough pressure that eventually the water
pushed the wall off the foundation it also broke through the windows and a few
parts of this building and in one room had enough force after breaking through
the window that it punched out the wall on the other side of that same room.
Our plan is to open this breezeway to be 14 feet wide.
What that will do is mean that
as future floods come around the side of this building they'll have an easy exit
without being backed up and forced into the historic structure causing damage to that.
However the trade-off is this building originally had only a
three-foot opening in this place and we're proposing to widen it to 14 feet
that's a very significant change to the historic structure and those trade-offs
are what we need help from others to verify that we're making the right decision.
The law requires us to consult with the public as well as with federal and state
agencies and tribes about the work that we plan to do here. One of the ways we
consult with the public is through social media by posting things on
Facebook and on our website we also hold public meetings where the public can ask
us questions and give us their input directly and that is extremely valuable to us.
Sometimes when you're in a project so deep you can't see the big picture
and the public really helps us see the big picture.
We're now two and a half years since the flood and even though looking around it
looks like not much work has happened since the road work hasn't started the
repairs on the garage the visitor center haven't started yet we're actually about
50% done with our timeline. We're nearly at the approval stage we are almost
ready to move forward and obligate the money to contracts to start construction
work in fall of 2018. What that will mean is opening to the public in 2020.
Five years may sound like a long time
but when you're taking care of such a special and
unique historic place as this it's much better to do it right than to do it fast.