by Michelle Liu, managing editor

Psychology teacher Lindsay Zahn mentions “squishy floors” and the “horrendous smell” as part of the aftermath of last weekend’s flooding, but her actual loss post-rain is much more permanent.

Having been notified of the flooding in the school over the weekend, she acknowledges that “you do what you gotta do,” as her room was one of the many in the social studies, English and math hallways affected.

“I tweeted out later, ‘who needs a classroom to teach in?’” she said. “We made do the rest of the week.”

After school Thursday, however, Zahn realized that the bag holding every student note she’s received from her 12 years of teaching had been left on the floor.

“My heart just sank,” she said. “I picked it up, and I had three scrapbooks in there that I was going to put the notes in, and I started pulling those out and realized that they were all wet.”

Zahn proceeded to sift through the notes in an attempt to save them.

“I noticed that a lot of them were all shades of colors now from the markers running together, but I could still read a lot of them,” she said. “So I started laying them out and putting them on the desks to dry.”

Despite her efforts, some of the memories were a little too waterlogged.

“Some of them, I could tell what they were and who they were from, but I couldn’t tell what it was anymore, so I’m not going to lie, I shed a few tears yesterday,” she said.

Zahn remains cheery even though her letters, cards and illustrations remain permanently affected by the flooding.

“I’ll just put the Victims of the 2013 Floods in a scrapbook,” she said. “That way they can be still salvaged.”

And, in case of Consol’s next natural disaster?

“Don’t have anything worthwhile on the floor!” she said.

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All photos by Dana Branham.