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Author
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Topic: Flooded cinema
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Stephen Furley
Film God
Posts: 3059
From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England
Registered: May 2002
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posted 06-27-2007 04:26 AM
Thomas,
Is this at Medowhall? How bad is it in Sheffield itself? Most on the television news coverage seems to be from a village somewhere outside that's already almost totally under deep water, and threatened with much more if the earthwork dam at the reservoir fails. There were some pictures which seemed to show flooding around Forgemasters; I know they have a site not far from the City Centre; I remember seeing it from the tram, on the line to Medowhall, I think; I'm not sure inf that was the same place, or if they have another site somewhere. There were also some shots of what looked like the two old cooling towers at Tinsley.
I would asume that the three theatres in the city centre, The Crucible, the one that I can't remember the name of (Lyceum, is it), and the Library Theatre are high enough not to be affected. The Library Theatre used to show film, the equipment was removed last year, but I managed to obtain some 2000 foot spools, and was hoping to buy some more from them. How about the Odeon, and the new art house type place that you see if you walk from the station/bus interchange to the library?
I go to Sheffield twice each year to see a film show at the Library Theatre, run on a Bell and Howell portable 16mm machine, with a marc 300 lamp, that show ends at about 22:30, so I then have to hang about until 01:45 the following morning for the first coach back to London.
The last I heard, the M1 motorway was still closed but the railway had re-opened. Looks like some of the worst flooding since East Anglia in '53, and unusual to see it in a city location. Hope everybody is safe.
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 06-27-2007 05:43 AM
I was the chief at City Screen, York, during the now infamous York floods of November 2000. Ironically, the building (being right on the bank of the River Ouse in the city centre) was designed to withstand a 'one in 400 years' flood level; yet a worse one came along only eleven months after we opened for business! Furthermore, if it wasn't for one relatively minor design flaw, we could have kept the cinemas open.
The foundations of the building are below the average low tide water level, and the basement was occupied by an Internet cafe. All the computers and furniture were on casters, portable and designed to be easily removable to an upper level if the waters rose. This we did, successfully.
However, the room which contains all the incoming electrical gear - master breakers, RCDs for all circuits in the building, the fire alarm master panel and the battery bank for the PMLs (emergency lighting system in the event of a power failure) - was also in the basement. When the PML battery cabinet went under water there was simply no option but to shut down the power supply to the entire building, thereby closing it to the public.
We were closed for nearly three weeks, I think (Darren might remember the exact number of days; I can't), until that room had dried out sufficiently to replace the flood-damaged hardware, test everything and power up the building again. The building felt thoroughly damp for around a month afterwards. On the morning we reopened, we struck a xenon lamp in one of the projectors and it exploded about five seconds later. When we inspected the other lamphouses, we found that condensation had formed in all of them. All the projection boxes were at second floor level or higher (i.e. at least 20-25 feet above the river), so for the condensation to get up that far just shows you what three weeks in the cold, damp and without power can do to a building.
Maddeningly, if only that incoming power and services room had been at the top of the building (i.e. the reinforced, waterproof three phase cables had just come out of the ground and run to the top floor without any kind of break), we'd have been able to keep the cinemas running. We'd probably have had to close the bar (it's partly built over a balcony, and there was some question as to whether the fast-flowing water had compromised the structure) in any event, but if this one design detail had been different, I'm pretty sure we could have kept the films running.
If the auditoria themselves in the Sheffield site are underwater, I'm glad I don't insure the place! At the very least the carpets will need to be replaced, and probably the seats as well. And the auditoria could take months to dry out before it's even possible to start. I worked at a cinema in Exeter in the late '90s. The drain which ran from the loos out to the main sewer ran underneath the main foyer and one of the auditoria to the side of the building. A bit of a smell had been building up in the loos for weeks, but we didn't think much of it. However, it turned out that the drain hadn't been properly lined: cement had crumbled, slowly blocking it. The pressure had built up gradually, until late one evening (thankfully when the foyer was empty and everyone was in the auditoria) a manhole cover in the foyer blew open and sprayed a fountain of ![[bs]](graemlins/bs.gif) all over the box office area! When the drain was repaired, lots of carpet had to be replaced and walls repainted, though we only actually had to close the building for half a day.
York got off relatively lightly this time. Thanks to the phone and the Internet I was able to work from home on Monday, thankfully, and just stayed bunkered up in a warm and dry flat with lots of coffee. On the drive across the A64 to work in Leeds yesterday and today, the only evidence of anything unusual was (i) that the Park and Ride at Clifton Moor, on the York outer ring road, was flooded where the road goes over the river and the railway, and (ii) the football field by the brewery at Tadcaster was also a pond. But AFAIK there were no problems in York or Leeds on the scale of the damage in Doncaster, Sheffield and Rotherham. Apparently, if that dam near Rotherham bursts, several villages will be completely submerged, it will take out a power station which runs half of Sheffield and a 20-mile stretch of the M1 will be closed for months. I bet Leeds/Bradford and Teesside airports were busy yesterday - that's about the only way it's possible to get from north to south at the moment!
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