Years ago, I was in charge of operations for a mainframe. They were adding another building to our complex and didn't calculate storm run off correctly. We got a big storm, water ran down, hit the side of our building, seeped in, got wicked up by carpeting and deposited under the raised floor of our computer room.
Of course, no one ever bothered to replace the batteries(?!?) in our under floor water detectors so we weren't aware of the water until it was about an inch deep. So we (myself and a colleague) lifted the floor plates, grabbed our shop vac and started vacuuming off the water while waiting for facilities management to arrive.
Later, we thought about what we had done and shivered.
Whomever designed the raised floor system in that room should have been shot because it was 18" x 18" steel plates on a steel grid structure. To lift a plate, we stuck an L shaped allan wrench in a hole in the corner, lifted it up, stuck our hand under it and lifted up. (That was dangerous all by itself as my colleague learned when he dropped a plate and lost part of a finger.) And, of course, computer mainframe cabling is the main reason for the raised floor as all the pieces of equipment are interconnected in that space and, more importantly, powered through there.
So, we were standing on steel plates on top of a steel grid work, vacuuming water off of 220 power cables. My still being here to share the story vouches for the fact that IBM power cables were water tight though we did find some rusted contact areas later on when we decommissioned the mainframe...
