SFRAW (and the other businesses located on the surrounding property) were devastated by an incredible flood from last night/this morning’s storm. Unbelievably, 13″ of muddy/filthy waters made their way into our entire unit including (incredibly) into the walk-in freezer & cooler; the office was totally submerged – every inch of the unit was flooded. Everything at or near ground level is covered in filthy water and destroyed – the computers, electronics, paint on the walls, book & book shelves, office files/member records, office supplies, packaging, floor mats & area rug, supplies such as paper supplies and office supplies — all ruined and needs to go to the dump. The clean-up is overwhelming as we face the risk of mold damage if we don’t do a proper job with clean-up.

Sadly, our extensive insurance won’t cover this loss — only if there was a fire as a result of the flood, would this have been covered. The issue was a huge drainage basin located on an empty lot that is city property behind the property at Napoleon Street became blocked and turned into a raging river/tidal wave of debris that swept into our units and even flooded the cars in the parking lot – everything was moved by the waters. It is like nothing I have ever seen in person — just on TV. It is overwhelming.

We were able to save all of the inventory/products and move them over to a cold storage facility while we clean and decontaminate the unit and walk-ins – which we will continue to do tomorrow. I couldn’t write this message today since we have no connectivity at the warehouse now — AT&T said they can come tomorrow to replace the damaged equipment.

We will be closed tomorrow. I don’t know yet about Friday — it depends on how much we can get done tomorrow for clean-up. If you would like to come to help — we can use your support/labor and willingness to help clean. It will take several passes with the power washer and then the dry time before we can move back our inventory and be open for business and back to manufacturing. Our POS will not be operational until next week. Even if we’re open, we will have to use Square or take cash & checks and do our best to guesstimate for pricing.

We will not have our holiday event on Saturday; I won’t be able to make broth and tallow, as promised.

For those that had pre-orders for Marin delivery on Saturday — we actually will be able to still get 99% of these orders filled and Jeff will be able to deliver Sat morning as planned.

This is very hard. If we survive this or not will depend entirely on you, our members and customers. If you care about SFRAW, please come help to clean tomorrow, or come and buy things when we have things available for sale again (and, if you can, pay a little extra to help us with this enormous financial hit). Help us with a fundraising (Kickstarter?) campaign, which we will need to launch to get through this.

Someone helping today (just happened to drive up and offered to help all day — thank you, Nik!!) made reference to the Six Million Dollar Man (Bionic Man/Woman/Dog shows) — that if we can make it through this, SFRAW will become “better…stronger…faster.” Maybe if we can do a fundraiser and people chip in to help…this will be true?

Please stay tuned for more details. I’m so sorry we’re closed right now. We’ll do our very best to be back for you ASAP — with your help.

My biggest question right now is: will our community support us during this time of need?

Your Weary Leader,

Kasie

PS – If you want to make a donation before I get the Kickstarter up (this will take a bit to do and I could use help with it!) you can send a donation in any amount via PayPal to: sfraw@sfraw.com or just stop by and donate what you can. Even small amounts will help; even reassuring us that you will buy from us when we get things back together for sale will help. Tomorrow, labor for cleaning will be the biggest help. Thank you.

Victoria’s ingenious method of drying (and saving!) your membership records!! Best use of the dehydrators yet

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