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Quaker Oats: ‘We were going to be back’
May. 25, 2013 3:23 pm
CEDAR RAPIDS — No magic or managerial genius can hold back unrelenting floodwaters, even at the world's largest cereal plant.
Jay Hardeman, manufacturing director at the Quaker Co. plant next to downtown Cedar Rapids, came to know limits during an emergency nighttime run for gasoline to keep temporary pumps working alongside the plant's huge flood pumps as the Cedar River kept coming in June 2008.
Off the flood-fighting front lines and onto the elevated stretch of Interstate 380 next to the Quaker plant is where Hardeman says it hit him: 'All I saw was water on both sides of the interstate,' he recalls. 'That's when I knew we were in trouble. That's when I was, 'Oh, my God, this is real.' '
A couple of hours later, before dawn on Friday morning, June 13 — despite equipment brought in to build higher temporary levees — the Quaker effort to protect itself from the flood ended.
'We realized it was just not going to happen. We weren't going to be able to save it. It was time to pull the plug,' Hardeman says.
Water flooded the plant from its backside and the downtown side, damaging much of the plant's operating infrastructure — electrical controls, motors, air compressors, blowers and more — in the plant's lower level. A sign above the door at the plant's visitors entrance shows the high-water mark — about seven feet high — though most of the plant's first floor took on about three feet of water.
At the end, after the company had sent the majority of the plant's 1,100 employees home, a crew of craft and maintenance employees and managers remained to work and to direct contractors in the final effort to protect the plant.
Tom Metelmann, today's senior plant director, says the plant lost little of what it makes to the flood. He says the plant had shut down its production line, most of which is on the fourth and fifth floors of the 14-story plant, on Wednesday, well before the flood's crest on Friday. The plant ships its products — oatmeal, instant oatmeal, grits, flour, ready-to-eat cereals like Captain Crunch, Aunt Jemima syrup and more — as it comes off the production line, so nearly all the finished product had been trucked out.
Quaker is a division of PepsiCo, and Metelmann and Hardeman say the headquarters of Quaker and PepsiCo began lining up contractors from around the country for recovery and cleanup just in case and then when it became apparent the plant would lose its fight with the river. There was a sense, they say, that many entities would be competing for recovery resources. Quaker didn't intend to wait around.
The plant's emergency action plan shifted from defense to recovery, and company managers moved to high ground at the Marriott Hotel on Collins Road NE to direct the recovery.
A first priority, Hardeman says, was to check the well-being of every plant employee. Next, a skeleton crew of Quaker employees ventured back into the plant with the help of the Cedar Rapids Fire Department, even as most of the plant was surrounded by water. It was a good thing, Hardeman says. The flood had broken a 10-inch water line at the plant, and the city already had lost much of its water supply. The line was quickly fixed.
Quaker had employees to look after, but it also had customers' store shelves to keep filled.
Quaker plants in Danville, Ill., where Metelmann was plant manager at the time, and Peterborough, Ontario, helped produce what the Cedar Rapids plant could not. Customers across the nation likely noticed little change for Quaker's most popular products, Metelmann and Hardman say.
Within three days, Quaker relit its Quaker Oats sign atop the plant — a signature feature of Cedar Rapids' skyline, along with the plant's white grain silos — to show that the plant was on the way back, Hardeman says.
Within three weeks, the first line of production resumed after an in-house competition among production teams to see which could get back online first. The line that packages twin packs of oats won the challenge, Hardeman says.
Within three months, the plant had returned to full production, Metelmann says.
At the time of the flood, the plant had been fully insured against losses and interruption to business, but that does not mean that the plant did not lose money, Metelmann says.
He did not quantify the loss, nor did say what it cost Quaker to build a new flood-protection wall around the plant next to the Cedar River.
Metelmann says the wall was built to comply with the standards set by Quaker and its insurers, and he says the wall now protects the plant to a height of about 24 feet. That's above the level of the 100-year flood plain, four feet above the city's pre-2008 historic flood of 20 feet, but still seven feet or so below the 2008 flood level.
The flood protection plans of the Army Corps of Engineers and the city of Cedar Rapids call for raising the Quaker protection wall another five to seven feet to defend against another 2008-like flood. The Quaker wall and its substructure are built to handle the additional wall height, Metelmann says, but the additional height is a plan still seeking congressional approval and funding.
'We, as a corporation, felt we cannot wait that long, and we need to make sure we protect ourselves. So that's why we went ahead with our wall,' Metelmann says.
The new wall, which features steel sheet piling driven into bedrock to prevent water seepage under it, has been in place for about two years now.
'Let's just say it was a significant investment by PepsiCo to make sure we're protected,' Metelmann says.
New flood wall or not, Metelmann says the plant paid attention to the Cedar River this spring, particularly when an ice jam in the river forced the river level up five to six feet in no time.
'We watched it very closely. … We wanted to monitor where we stand. … There was no issue,' he says.
The flood wall represents what Metelmann says is Quaker's commitment to Cedar Rapids.
'They could have moved on and tried to go somewhere else,' he says, 'but the company really likes being here. We're a huge part of the community. We have great employees that show a huge amount of dedication to the Quaker brand.'
Some of the plant's shipping workers who together won the giant lottery jackpot a year ago are still on the job.
'How quickly we came back up from the flood really shows (the commitment of the company and employees),' Metelmann says. 'Three days after the flood, everything was dark, and we lit the Quaker sign.'
Hardeman says some at the plant scratched their heads a little over the need to quickly light the sign.
'But it was the right thing to do,' he says. 'That was an effort to let people know that we were going to be back.'
Did you know?
- The Cedar Rapids Quaker plant is the largest cereal plant in the world.
- A cereal plant has been on the site since 1873.
- Many of the buildings in place today are from the 1920s.
- All the plant's oats come via rail from Manitoba and Saskatchewan in Canada.
- The plant has 244 silos.
- About 100 semi-trailer trucks a day leave with finished food products.
Jay Hardeman, director of manufacturing for hot cereals and milling operations at Quaker
Tom Metelmann, plant manager at Quaker