PORTLAND, Maine - Volunteers at a southern Maine community radio station are hard at work trying to save thousands of vinyl records. About 3,000 LPs - many of them rare blues and reggae releases - were damaged when a water pipe burst at WMPG, on the University of Southern Maine's Portland campus.
A portable fan has been running more or less constantly in the basement of WMPG Radio since Thursday morning. That's when someone in the building noticed a complete lack of water pressure when they turned the taps on - not a good sign, says station manager Jim Rand.
"When you don't have water pressure, usually something bad is happening," Rand says. "And the plumber came over and quickly identified that there was water shooting into the basement here at unbelievable pressure, turned the water off, and fixed where the pipe had burst."
By that time, there were several inches of water on the floor of the basement, where WMPG keeps its library of some 20,000 records. Rand says more than 3,000 of them were damaged.
"And the water came flying from above the head and came down right on top of our blues library first," he says, "which was the worst case because we broadcast blues music 5-to-7 p.m. six nights a week here, and it's one of our most popular shows. We've been collecting these records since 1973."
Also damaged: a number of rock LPs - letters L and M - so listeners might not be hearing any Led Zeppelin or Motorhead for a while. Other musical casualties include some world music and spoken word, as well as a lot of rare reggae - Jamaican imports.
"Lots of collectors items, irreplaceable music - and they all were covered in water, pretty much," Rand says.
The good news is that Rand expects many of the vinyl discs to survive. He dusts off one rare Delta blues recording that survived the flood.
"Who's this you're going to play?" I ask.
"This is 'Going Back to Memphis,' by Sunnyland Slim."
Several of WMPG's 200 volunteers spent all day Thursday transporting the waterlogged vinyl to a nearby university-owned building, where thousands of albums were laid out over two floors, sheets of newspaper between them to help them dry and prevent damage.
Rand says he was encouraged by the response. While he hopes most of the vinyl can be saved, Rand says the prognosis is not so good for the album covers and liner notes. "Maybe some of them will be save-able, but you have chances of getting black mold and stuff like that, and you don't want that."
Which means some of WMPG's dedicated volunteers will no doubt be spending the foreseeable future documenting the records one-by-one and producing new, albeit makeshift, album covers.
"We're going to have to buy all new cardboard jackets for the records, and then we'll photograph all the covers and then try to document that part of it, then match them back up." They may not look as good as they did before, says Jim Rand, but the important thing is the music will play on.
"Someone should maybe write a blues song about what happened here this week?" I suggest.
"Yeah," Rand says.