Due to damage from a burst water pipe, the LDS Chicago Temple will be closed until March. Very sad!
Here’s the scoop from LDSChurchTemples.com:
The Chicago Illinois Temple will be closed until further notice due to water damage from a burst pipe located over the women’s instruction room. The pipe, which froze and broke during the final weekend of December 2008, left one room extensively damaged and put four inches of water on the floor—ruining the carpet in the building.
Many of us spend time and money preparing for the threat of fire, but water damage is much more widespread. It’s amazing how much harm a little leak in a pipe can cause. Overflowing rivers or hurricane surges are vastly worse, of course. Water is one of the most dangerous elements we face – are you prepared?
Speaking of water damage, a few years ago I was sitting in my office at Kimberly-Clark working on my computer when it suddenly began raining – in my office. Streams of dirty brown water began rushing through the gaps in my tile ceiling. I was able to quickly protect my computer and move it to safety (next I protected my precious books). An old heating pipe had corroded and burst. An adjacent office faced much more severe damage in spite of our immediate efforts to reach maintenance and have the water shut off. Had it been under high pressure, it could have been really disastrous. If this had happened at night or on a weekend, I hate to think what several hours of undetected flooding could have done.
You probably all have fire alarms. Any of you have alarms that detect flooding or that alert you if your sump pump fails (for those with sump pumps)?
There has been a recent series of burst pipes in meeting houses in the Idaho area causing major damage. I heard that the Church was evaluating the plans or suppliers to see where the problems are originating. I wonder if there is any connection.
Did you have plenty of Kimberly-Clark absorbent products like Depends handy to clean up the mess?
Good Afternoon Jeff, I'm sorry to hear about your plumbing problems!
I have to admit straight away; I'm here fishing.
I am part of a group of bloggers who used to frequent the blog of Ray Comfort; an evangelical Christian with a penchant for misrepresenting science and raising the ire of atheists.
The group I speak of has now reformed into a web forum for the civilized discussion of all things religion – along with assorted other interests.
It was recently noted that most of our focus was on evangelical Christianity (we currently are engaged in a sequential Bible study with the aid of several resident theists) and that we were neglecting a whole host of other theologies due to a lack of input from members of other religions.
I took it upon myself to scour around for alternative viewpoints…
I know very little about Mormons (and what I do know, I am sure, has been coloured by movie caricatures and media stereotypes) but I am always interested to learn new things; as are the other members of our group.
We are called 'SMRT' (Skeptical Minds & Rational Thinkers) which is something of an in-joke; a bit of self-deprecating humour at our own expense.
[www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhrfhjLd9e4]
If you are interested at all in finding out who we are and what we are about, please feel free to step into our Foyer:
http://www.wearesmrt.com/bb/viewforum.php?f=20
There will be many questions for you, I'm sure, but most – if not all – are intent on furthering their understanding of religion.
If it's ok with you, I'll hover around your blog for a bit and see what I can learn; let me know what you think too!
It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance.
Regards,
Matt
Since this is now an open forum for shameless advertising:
Drink Coke.
As someone living in Missouri- where the flooding of basements is a regular occurence I regretfully say that I’m completely unaware of anykind of alarm system to let you know if your sump pump isn’t working. They MAY exist- but I’ve never heard of anykind of warning system.
We have a sump pump, for which we are very grateful. Even still, we’ve had pretty bad flooding twice. Once, when the rain was more like a deluge and even the sump pump couldn’t help, and once when we didn’t realize it had been unplugged!!! In which case, an alarm wouldn’t have worked anyway. 🙂
Something like that happened here in St. Louis a year or so ago. And they had just recently re-opened the temple after cleaning, if I remember correctly.
We don’t have basements here in Florida and it doesn’t get cold enough to burst the pipes! Our Temple is still open and operating.
Thanks, Matt. FYI, one of my annoying policies is that comments with YouTube links usually get deleted as soon as I see them, unless I know the submitter or the content. The problem is that it’s very hard to gauge the “safeness” of a YouTube link without looking at the whole thing, and I don’t want to take that kind of time. People have disguised depravity with innocent beginnings and I’m fussy in my opposition to depravity. i also don’t like anti-Mormon videos being publicized here because I am openly biased in favor of my religion. All that leads me to be careful about posted links, especially YouTube links.
The short Simpsons clip you posted isn’t a helpful ad for your site, FYI – but I’ve been known to tolerate a little humor, so I’ll let this go. Thanks for dropping by!
Jeff,
Thanks for allowing my comment to be added, despite the Youtube video (perhaps you could include a rule in the side bar so first-time posters don’t make the same mistake again?).
Also, a big thanks for stopping by the SMRT site, I appreciate that none of us have endless hours to while away on internet forums and I totally understand if you have more important things to attend to.
Just to clarify; we are well aware that Homer’s idiotic miss-spelling of the word ‘smart’ makes us look stupid by comparison and that is precisely the point. We know that atheists and sciencey-types often get labeled as wannabe-intellectuals and full of themselves, so we wanted something that acknowledged that we all make mistakes and we can all learn something new.
Different strokes for different folks I guess!
So, thanks for stopping by and I look forward to any future discussions.
Cheers,
Matt
I wonder how many weddings had to be diverted to other temples.
Just a few months ago, my employer, who runs his company out of his home, and is also one of my home teachees, had his basement flooded out. The sump pump had broken, and the basement was ruined.
We managed to save just about everything, but the carpet had to be completely replaced (which turned out to be a blessing, since it was obvious that the previous carpet installers had done a less-than-satisfactory job, and there was also mold under the baseboards).
About the same time, one of my brothers, who was living in St. Louis, told me about a water level indicator he and his wife had purchased for their home. I don’t mean to be shamelessly advertising, but it is called the LEAK frog, and it sets off an alarm when the water level reach 1/32″. It saved my brother’s home on at least one occasion. No idea if a similar product exists.
Smoke detector? Check.
CO detector? Check.
Water detector? Check.