Working out of a municipal garage, Millvale police Chief Dean Girty has been busy drying out three years of arrest records from the late 1990s -- manila folders that were soaked when 4¹/₂ feet of water filled the police offices during the Sept. 17 flood.

	Bob Donaldson, Post-Gazette Millvale police Chief Dean Girty is faced with drying and copying years of police records damaged by the Sept. 17 flood. He dries them atop a space heater, then photocopies them for the new records file. Click photo for larger image.

"Believe it or not, I am putting them in front of a space heater," Girty said last week. "What we are doing is drying them out and recopying them. We have to take one paper at a time. But we didn't lose anything."

The last item Girty grabbed as water filled his office was the police computer hard drive, which contains all the department's recent data, everything from arrests to payroll records.

The files that Girty is salvaging are older arrest files that still are important to keep, needed in cases where a defendant gets a new trial, a civil suit is filed or a continuing investigation is launched.

"I think we are required to keep 10 years' worth," Girty said.

The loss of documents and important paperwork is one of the many problems faced by municipalities, schools and businesses after the devastating flooding caused by Hurricane Ivan.

For example, Girty said, Millvale hasn't received any federal money for flood damage and has had to eliminate six part-time police jobs because budget forecasts are so dim.

Some flood victims are sending records away to restoration companies in an attempt to preserve them. Others are trying to salvage what they can.

Most are finding that the process can be time-consuming, expensive and not covered by insurance.

Ray Losego, owner of Apple Printing in Heidelberg, had just bought Pioneer Printing in Carnegie and was getting ready to move it to Heidelberg when both businesses were flooded.

At Pioneer Printing, where all the company's paperwork got wet, Losego said two employees strung clotheslines and hung files on them to dry. Artwork was destroyed, and, Losego said, "Now we are relying on the customer, asking if they have an original. It is a nightmare."

Borough Manager Mary Ellen Ramage said Etna lost many of its paper records, kept in 39 file cabinets full of everything from personnel records to police documents.

"We are trying to help our residents, and we, ourselves, are in such dire straits," Ramage said.

"We lost our minute books, our ordinance books, our charter ... documents going back to 1868."

Those records include contracts and documentation that was not on computer.

The borough's computers were flooded, but Ramage said information on its hard drives had been retrieved.

"At least we can do water billings and things we need to bring in some revenue," said Ramage, who is working out of a trailer on Pine Street. She is worried about every aspect of her borough's finances, from decreasing tax revenues to paying for the restoration of its paper documents.

Etna has sent the contents of the 39 file cabinets to a documents-restoration company in Middlesex, N.Y., that is supposed to salvage them. Ramage hasn't gotten a cost estimate yet.

"The cost will be expensive," she predicted.

Whether the records are valuable enough to be restored is a question that will have to be weighed against the cost.

Even though the borough carried flood insurance on its building, the insurance does not cover any damaged paperwork, Ramage said.

She said furniture, which is covered by insurance, is nonessential. Replacement of the papers, which are essential, is not.

"If I had all my papers and not my furniture, I could do my job," Ramage said.

Her husband, Peter, was principal of All Saints School, which permanently closed after the flood destroyed everything in it.

He said even the school's computer hard drive, which was soaked, could not be restored.

Ramage is still waiting to see whether student transcripts can be recovered.

In Heidelberg, where the 1902 borough building was flooded and may never be used again, borough Secretary Virginia McIntyre said the borough kept its recent records on the second floor, where they weren't damaged.

The main paperwork McIntyre is worried about these days is complicated forms from the Federal Emergency Management Agency that must be completed so Heidelberg can try to reclaim some of the money it spent to clean up the flood mess.

"We have over $30,000 in bills for cleanup," said McIntrye, whose office was moved to the former Heidelberg Elementary School.

McIntrye is trying to document everything from overtime for police to the cost of extra workers to the costs associated with removing debris for FEMA officials.

FEMA has promised to reimburse 75 percent of what it costs to repair municipal flood damage, and Gov. Ed Rendell said the state would pick up the remaining 25 percent.