Without taking liberties...
I won't take great liberties to explain in detail, but Marshall's area was subjected to very high snow-load, ice, and wind this winter. I was fortunate as to have same ice and wind, but less long-term snow accumulation, but his farm buildings... where most of his collection is stored, were flattened. Initially, back when the accumulation started getting serious, it looked like one portion of one roof was going to fail... and at that time, enough pressure would've been relieved to keep the building standing. There was substantial support from adjoining portions of the structure, however, the roof didn't fail- instead, that portion of the structure collapsed. At the time, he was able to get in and prop up the damaged segment, but excessive load meant the rest of the structure was under extreme stress.
A little more snow, followed by high wind (typical here) broke up more segments of the building, and took it to the ground. This wasn't a 'simple' square building- it was a barn with additions all around, and it's all one big pile'a mess now.
From what I understand, at least one other, and possibly two, that suffered the same fate.
Nothing can be done right now- because of the snowmelt, and ice blocking drainage in an otherwise flat area, this area of the farm has 4" of standing water atop a foot of mud, and from a foot down to about 5 feet, it's still frozen. Until that's all thawed out, there will still be a pond, so keeping that in mind, he won't be able to get any machinery in there until at least mid-june. As for the machinery, well, hard to say. Regardless of how BAD it may be, I'm sure Marshall won't declare ANYTHING a 'total loss'... provided it can be extracted, and hasn't become crushed-beyond-recovery by the building. It will be lots of hard work, and as yet, there is no plan, nor no need to worry about making a plan until such time as it is actually accessible. We can be certain that the buildings won't be rebuilt- there's no economic capacity to do so.
But this much is certain- his 60" x 360" Rockford lathe is still intact, undamaged, and well wrapped in it's storage position about 90' from the collapsed buildings. Perhaps, if it were in one of those buildings, it would've provided enough support to prevent collapse, but we're glad that we don't have to find out, as it takes a little bit more than a hand-dolly and engine-hoist to move.
DK :-\
