SPRINGFIELD, NJ — The Springfield Public Library, closed for much of the last two and a half years, has reopened. From March 2019 to May 2021, the building was closed to the public because of the pandemic. It reopened in May 2021, until Tropical Storm Ida’s deluge four months later, Sept. 1-3, 2021, closed it again. It reopened on Monday, March 14, following repairs, a house cleaning and a ribbon-cutting. State library and Springfield officials came together to celebrate the achievement of getting the library up and running again. Those close to the necessary work said reopening was not an easy task.
“We spent about $250,000 on the library,” said Springfield business administrator John Bussiculo at the reopening. “We tried very hard to get to that number, and we’re thrilled. This library means a lot to our residents and we wanted it done properly.”
The money, he said, came from insurance and a library fund.
Following Ida’s rains and the water damage the library suffered, Bussiculo said he was on the premises every day.
“It wasn’t flooded, but everything was damp,” he said. “We had about 3 inches of water. Van Winkle’s creek, which is right nearby, overflowed.”
Motioning to an exterior wall, Bussiculo said that eight cars had been submerged in 4 feet of water, but that the flood had not penetrated into the library. Bussiculo acknowledged that Springfield had some luck.
“We only had a limited amount of water,” he said. “The dehumidifiers were on for several weeks.”
According to a report by the U.S. Geological Survey, in New Jersey, the floodwaters produced by Tropical Storm Henri two weeks earlier had not fully receded when Ida dropped 10 inches of rain within a 24-hour period. The report said some of the state’s worst flooding occurred in Union and Essex counties.
Bussiculo said the toughest part about getting the library open was finding the contractors to do the work. Many of them were already busy.
“In order to be successful,” he said, “you couldn’t have one trade holding up another. The scheduling was the hardest part.”
The work took about eight weeks, from Monday, Jan. 3, to the end of February.
“The Springfield Department of Public Works, and its director, Robert Boettcher, were in here until Friday,” he said.
Books were moved from the children’s area to the adult area when the children’s area was being restored, and vice versa.
“First the sheetrock walls came down, and then the insulation was removed,” Bussiculo said. “We cleaned the inside of the walls and tested everything. Anything suspected of having mold was encapsulated after being cleaned. Then we reinsulted, put up sheetrock, spackled and painted. We think it turned out pretty well. It was frustrating at first.”
Springfield Director of Engineering Mike Disko said the sheetrock was reinstalled with a small gap just above the baseboard, so that water will not wick up the wall again, should another flood occur.
Library Director Dale Spindel said that, on the night of the storm, the basement in her Cranford home was flooded.
“I was up all night,” she said, “bailing out the basement and dreading what happened to the library. I got an early-morning message that the library was flooded.”
She arrived at the library wearing her boots. Wherever she stepped, the rug squished. There were pools of water on the floor. She had gone to workshops about disasters, she said, but was unprepared when confronted by one. But there was a silver lining. Disaster would be followed by a major house cleaning.
“After things got moved around, we discovered a lot of things in storage that could have been thrown out a long time ago,” she said.
Spindel, who has been SPL director for nine years, said she was grateful to the NJ State Library for its $20,000 emergency grant to reopen the library.
Photos by Daniel Jackovino