A water leak at the storage facilities of the Icelandic Institute of Natural History (NÍ) on Saturday night didn’t cause significant damage, thanks to an employee’s decision to come to work early on Sunday morning.
A number of vegetation maps were damaged but they can be replaced. Other and more valuable objects were saved in time, Morgunbladid reports.
“It was lucky that one of our employees likes his job so much that he came to work at 7 am [on Sunday] and discovered the leak,” said director of NÍ Jón Gunnar Ottósson. “If not, the flooding would have continued the entire day.”
When the eager employee, Thorvaldur Björnsson, arrived at his workplace, he was greeted by ankle-deep water and darkness—the electricity was dead—and called the fire department.
“Water leaked down the lights and the water pipes,” Björnsson described. The water came from the floor above the storage room, which doesn’t belong to NÍ’s facilities. It is believed that someone forgot to turn off a tap.
NÍ has been facilitated in preliminary housing for around 40 years and has regularly been promised permanent facilities. In that time it has been subject to further leaks and other accidents, which have often caused more damage than the leak last weekend.
Now it finally appears as if the promise will be kept—NÍ is expecting permanent facilities next autumn.
