Posted on 11/03/2016 10:10:12 AM PDT by Twotone
History has been left out to dry in a secluded compound south of Fayetteville.
Filing cabinets sit open with fans trained on the papers inside.
Books have been piled up to be sorted and salvaged at a future date.
They sit atop display cases, filled with patches, berets and artifacts from wars from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Cliff Newman walks through it all, occasionally pausing to thumb through a book or peak at debris stored in plastic bags.
"We're still kind of in a state of shock," he said.
Newman, executive director of the Special Forces Association, said the nonprofit was hit particularly hard by the floodwaters that came with Hurricane Matthew last month.
(Excerpt) Read more at fayobserver.com ...
My father was a WWII era army ranger. His service records were destroyed in a warehouse fire decades ago! Now, whatever might have remained of his outfit’s record of heroic service may be lost! Very sad.
Great...now every stolen valor type will be a “Ranger”, have their “Q course”, and HALO jumpmaster, and diver badges.......
If you live in Eastern NC, never store anything of value at ground level.
I know how you feel. I served in Iraq for 15 minths straight and a year later going to Afghanistan my new unit could not find any records of me ever being in Iraq. Whoosh, it was all gone. I took a bunch of phone calls from commanders to right that wrong to reflect my veteran battle pay. It is frustrating.
Did he ever use the VA, then they will have his records.
It is how I got my dads.
We had a similar flood when Nashville flooded several years ago, we are on the other end of the state, there is a Navy base BUPERS in Millington, TN just outside of Memphis, and it flooded the entire south side and got the records building. BUPERS is central Records for the Navy. They were piled up in piles, and the Navy ended up calling in Serv Pro in large buses to clean up the mess. Housing was destroyed, commissary flooded, Exchange, and many other buildings, base was off limits for weeks. The City of Millington got 1 FEMA bus. And no other help. Unlike Nashville which had country music stars helping them. We rolled up our sleeves and went to work.
It seems odd they would not have some insurance to cover this.
Yes, that is very sad.
As one person's priceless memorabilia is another person's junk, it's nearly impossible to assign a value to priceless memorabilia, so insuring priceless memorabilia can't be done, and that's why priceless memorabilia must be protected at all times, because once it's gone, it's gone forever.
DJ Taylor
Life Member Special Forces Association
They had some insurance, but apparently not flood insurance.
http://www.specialforcesassociation.org/bulletin-board/national-bod-columns/presidents-column/
Vacuum drying is the most reliable way to rescue wet books and documents..
After Katrina the company I work for hired a small army of temps to carefully pull every document out of the personnel files, put them on one of dozens of tables set up in a warehouse, waited for them to dry, then scanned them. Very expensive and time consuming process.
Call in Serv Pro they are experts in flood damage. They brought in huge Greyhound bus size units to clean up the Millington, TN US NAVY BUPERS Navy Records base when it flooded. DOD paid for it.
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