Bookmarks, Winston-Salem, N.C., had to close temporarily over the holiday weekend due to a flooding emergency that left the bookstore unable to fulfill curbside pickup orders and delayed processing of online orders. The business hopes to reopen today.
Jamie Rogers Southern, operations director at BookMarks, posted on Facebook that the flooding was caused by an act of vandalism: "When someone turns your hose on in the middle of the night and leaves it at the back door. Good thing we have amazing staff and volunteers who are terrific in emergencies! Just another fun event for 2020."
---
In El Paso, Tex., Books Are Gems suffered damage to 8,000 new books because of a broken water heater, the El Paso Times reported. Emma Acosta, grant manager for the nonprofit organization, said the heater broke about a week ago and flooded the store, damaging floors, walls and bookshelves. The bookshop provides free, new books to school children.
"Currently the bookstore is under repairs as the water seeped through the walls, so many of the walls had to be cut away to prevent mold from surfacing," Acosta noted. "The carpet had to be removed as it was unusable and several bookshelves actually collapsed.... We are accepting monetary donations to purchase new children's books to replace the many unusable books."