meals to more than 50 staff members and their families and pets, as well as 115 linemen, who were deployed to the region to repair thousands of miles of damaged power lines. “It really worked in our favor to get people safe and provide them with elec- tricity,” says Kissinger. “People were able to shower, but it also got us a head start on cleaning up our resort.” Staying flexible. “We had pockets of crews,” says Chumbler. “Every morn- ing, we’d divide them up based on equip- ment, based on skill set, based on need.” The scope of the remediation work was daunting, he says, though staff gained momentum daily. There was a no-schedule schedule in place. Team members were empowered to “come when they could and give what they could,” says Kissinger. The morning meeting was held on the later side—at 9 a.m., says Ortlieb—to better allow folks to take care of challenges they were still grappling with at home. “I think, as managers, it’s our job to remember how human everybody is,” he adds. Safety first. Safety was a priority, and conditions were evolving daily, says Ortlieb. “We were making sure every- one was outfitted with the proper PPE. Nobody that hadn’t touched a chain- saw was just grabbing one. We didn’t skip steps. We had a kind of slowest-is- smoothest-is-fastest sort of thing.” Getting by. Equipment was hard to come by. “We needed five times the amount of PPE we had,” says Chumbler. Kissinger couldn’t find a woodchipper for rent within a 200-mile radius. She had to
start checking in Illinois and Wisconsin. In-house equipment took a beating from the ice. “Mirrors were getting ripped off of the sides of vehicles,” says Ortlieb. THE PEOPLE The core remediation crew started with just five people and quickly swelled to 30. Alongside the in-house crew was an influx of contractors. “The number of outside contractors we had to hire was staggering,” says Chumbler. Arborists were brought in to triage the trees, especially on the golf courses, and logging companies were retained to salvage what timber they could from the pine plantations. Family to the rescue. The High- lands also leaned on its Boyne family. With many resorts winding down for the season, “we put the call out,” says Jeremy Cooper, VP of mountain sports develop- ment for Boyne Resorts, who helped rally additional assistance. “I went in person to both Sugarloaf and Sunday River (Maine) … and put the begging hands together,” he says. “You could see the GMs like Brian Heon or Karl Strand just point and say, ‘Hey, get these guys some help.’” Crews came from Maine, as well as Boyne’s Loon, N.H., Big Sky, Mont., and The Summit at Snoqualmie, Wash., ski areas Some drove all the way out with equipment, others got on airplanes. “It was important to have skilled sawyers,” says Kissinger, who coordinat- ed the efforts. “We got the cream of the crop from the corporation, and we’re for- ever grateful for all of it.” “It took a lot of people to make this
THE REMEDIATION The first order of business was to push debris off the roads so that emergency vehicles could pass if needed, though essentially, in that first week, “we couldn’t even go on the hill,” says Chumbler; the ice-loaded trees were too unpredictable. “We couldn’t start cutting trees down right away because of that built-up pres- sure and ice that was on them,” adds Ortli- eb. “They were snapping up in your face.” Recruiting help. The resort had already closed for winter when the storm rolled through, with 80 percent of the mountain ops team laid off for shut- down, says Ortlieb. “I thought, ‘I’m going to have to make calls and be like, ‘Just kidding. We need an army of workers just to help make our roads accessible.’” “We needed manpower quickly,” adds Chumbler, “but our teams had to deal with their own major issues and damage at their respective homes.” Offering help. While thousands of folks were without power for weeks, including Chumbler, Kissinger, and Ort- lieb (who was collecting water from a lake for his donkeys and sheep), proxim- ity to a substation meant the lights were back on in The Highlands’ main lodge and hotel after three days. With the help of on-site staff, the resort offered up beds, hot showers, and ABOVE: Post-storm clean up was a team effort that brought together dedicated local staff as well as folks from across the Boyne Resorts network. RIGHT: Canopy ice accumulation caused many trees to snap, leaving The Highlands’ red pine plantations looking like rows of matchsticks.
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