Trial By Fire by Cheri Kemp
When a person starts a new job, by the third or fourth month, most likely they feel they have a handle on all the duties and responsibilities that go along with the new position. By then the new job jitters have probably subsided somewhat and routine begins to set in. In January of 2015, we had three employees move up into new po- sitions with all the new duties that go along with a promotion. They were Steve Zera who became En- gineering Manager after the retire- ment of the former Engineer ing Manager Jim Spangler; Jerry Lawrence who replaced Neil Hen-
Brian Schafer, Elton Turner, Steve Zera, Jerry Lawrence & Ben Kinn
ert as Packaging Division Warehouse Manager and Ben Kinn who stepped in to fill the spot Jerry Lawrence vacated with his promotion, making Ben the Packaging Division Warehouse Floor Manager. In addition, within the last 10 months Brian Schafer had replaced Pat Hilliker as Facilities Manager and Elton Turner had replaced Marty Barclay as QA Director. By April 9th, 2015, each one of these gentlemen had finished a good day’s work here at Crest Foods and went home expecting to return the next day to their usual work routine. However, at approximately 6:15 PM on April 9th, Mother Nature decided to shake things up and challenge each of these men, and many other employees, with the task of totally rethinking how to do their jobs. Crest Foods was one of the lucky ones- when it comes to tornado strikes- because we only suffered property damage. Thankfully there were no injuries despite the fact we had a second shift working in the facility when it was struck. When we lost over 100,000 square feet of warehousing space, a new plan had to be put into effect within hours to: warehouse product; to protect good product from becoming damaged; secure the building; set up a system to find relocated product; and contact many, many outside contractors such as carpenters, plumbers, electricians, insurance companies, suppliers and customers, just to name a few. So this is just a preface to the enormity of the job that each of these people had facing them. Make no mistake about it that they, along with dozens of great employees and contractors around them, dove head first into uncharted territory. Here are their stories: Brian Schafer, Facilities Manager: Upon arriving at the warehouse my first priority was to make sure all employ- ees were accounted for and that no one was injured. Thankfully everyone was OK. Next on the list was to shut down the pump for the sprinkler system. Luckily three warehouse employees, who had just gone through a tornado, had shut down the sprinkler system. They did not know for sure what to shut off but were able to figure it out and in doing so they saved the building from major water damage. A big THANK YOU for their quick reaction. Getting the electricity shut off to the building as well as the natural gas line was the next major priority. Per Mar Se- curity was notified and the fire alarm system was taken out of service. Franklin Grove and Ashton Fire Depart- ments responded and assisted, so a Thank You goes to them for all of their help. I met with Jeff Meiners and Steve Zera a short time later and we started to assess all of the damage and started to plan how to secure the building for the night. Everyone from our department (Building Maintenance) was called in to help.
14 Crest Ink October, November & December 2015
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