Hundreds of books destroyed at Chapters Bookstore after flood

Hundreds of books have been destroyed after a popular Dublin city centre bookstore was flooded.

Staff at Chapters Bookstore on Parnell Street had a nasty surprise yesterday morning when they discovered the entire front of the store was flooded by a leak from the upper floor. They had to close down the store for the day in order to deal with the situation and clean the shop up.

Chapters chief Mick Finucane said: “There was a leak from the floor above us and it happened the other night. When we came in yesterday morning, the place was flooded, the whole front of the store was extremely wet and lots of books were damaged.

"We did a bit of a cleanup yesterday so we couldn't actually open so we had to close yesterday. A lot of the books were completely destroyed because of the amount of water that came in. There's a couple of hundred books that have just can't be saved, unfortunately.”

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Staff are not sure yet what exactly was the cause of the leak. “We'll just have to get on with things and bring things to our insurance company as quickly as possible,” Mick added.

“There's still a few drips here and there, but we're getting to the bottom of it there.” Mick said it was disappointing that the flood when the city centre was so busy with people coming into town because of the Easter holidays.

Chapters has always had staunch supporters however, and messages rolled in on social media from customers wanting to come in and help. He said: “We're very lucky. It's an unusual thing to have such loyal and kind customers who really care about the store, it means a lot for us.”

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