Smithtown Library starts down road to recovery, bringing back flood-damaged basement 

These days, the Smithtown Library basement resembles an empty warehouse more than a place where people used to study historic documents and take out DVDs. 

An area that once held more than 21,000 audiovisual materials, a learning lab and study areas is now barren, its carpets ripped up from the flooring and walls taken down, creating one large room stripped to the concrete.

Ceiling tiles and lighting fixtures have been taken down, exposing the building’s steel beams and wiring. Just a few windows provide natural light.

More than a month ago, floodwaters broke through one of these windows, causing severe water damage to the library basement, where a historic collection of Long Island documents was kept. The flooding left a trail of mold, mildew — and memories. 

But this blank slate is also the beginning of the road to recovery. And there is reason for optimism, thanks to the support of library-goers, the community and government officials, said Rob Lusak, director of the library.

The library closed indefinitely on Aug. 19 after historic rain and flooding hit the North Shore, causing severe damages to homes, buildings, Mill Pond in Stony Brook and Stump Pond in Blydenburgh State Park. The upper floors of the three-floor library, which also lost electricity during the storm, were mostly undamaged.

The library has spent around $401,588 in restoring the basement, between remediation and pack-out services and water removal costs.

While library officials said they hope to receive government help, they are touched by the outpouring of online donations from the community.

Caulfield said people have "come out in droves" to donate from across the country, noting one woman from Maryland who gave $3,000.

"A lot of the people that have donated are people that lived here and have relocated, but raised their families here," she said.

Lusak said he estimates they received more than $8,000 in donations.

"The support has been unbelievable," he said.

Assistant Director Eileen Caulfield said it will take an estimated $20 million to restore the basement, including the contents of its historical collection, which contained hundreds of materials such as maps and books dating to the 1600s.

Some of the basement, such as the staff lounge, has been totally cleaned out due to mold.

"It's totally gutted. Even the studs, the two-by-fours, which are metal, all ripped," Lusak said. "Because of the possibility of mold and contaminants, we just felt it was easier to rebuild everything than spot clean."

Oak that once wrapped around more than a dozen structural pillars has been removed and discarded.

All walls and nonessential structures also were taken down, including the learning lab, historical reading room, bathroom walls and Caulfield’s office, which took the brunt of the initial flooding and collapsed. 

A concrete wall that holds electrical panels, as well as the concrete walls that separated the community room from the main area, are the only walls standing. 

The room that housed the Long Island History collection, which is adjacent to the former community room, is only distinguished by rows of nails where shelves rolled out.

Lusak said the library will be reopened soon after it regains electricity, but the basement will remain closed until it is renovated.

Caren Zatyk, head of the Long Island Room since 2015 and who has worked with the collection for her 17-year career, said the documents are in the process of being restored by a company in Michigan. While they will not be exactly the same, she is grateful they will be salvageable.

"Some of them date back to the 1600s, but more than that, they're people's lives," she said. "They're people's stories, they're people's histories. It's the town's history, it's the library's history."

Zatyk said that before the storm, she had been working to digitize the documents as well as make them more "discoverable" for the public.

When she saw the aftermath, Zatyk said she immediately jumped into action to save the collection and was grateful to library staff who created an assembly line to bring plastic tubs of the documents upstairs.

This quick thinking, along with the fact that documents did not sustain a direct hit from the floodwaters, is the reason they can be restored, Caulfield said.

"She acted so quickly, got these materials upstairs, out of this horrible environment," she said about Zatyk. "And certainly did a lot that day to preserve them."

Once the collection returns to the library, it will be housed on a higher level as a preventive measure. It will continue to be available to the public by appointment in a separate reading room.

More preventive storm measures, such as new flood doors, also will be installed, Caulfield said.

Lusak said the library basement will host a new government services department, combining its passport and patent facilities with a depository library. It also will build a podcast room.

Some features, including the Learning Lab and quiet rooms, will be rebuilt, but "they won't look the way that they used to," as the floor plan will be changed to make more efficient use of space, Lusak said.

"We'll have a much better area, because we are starting with a clean slate," he said.