The Great Flood of 1999-The inside of the bakery

Well kids as you remember once a hurricane is predicted people go crazy buying bread.  We had a good plan in place...we delivered all day as much as we could and then stopped around 6pm.  The bakery continued to produce and our plan was hold the trailers at the bakery until the storm passes then send it out to the warehouses...great plan until the bakery went under water.  We could produce 10,000 loaves an hour and we estimated that we had over 100,000 loaves of bread on hand.  If you want to see a mess take a loaf of bread and throw it in your bathtub then try to pull it out and see what it weighs.

Anyway as the water started to rise we still had lots of people in the bakery...once the bakery started to flood it filled up quickly and we couldn't get everyone out so the fire company came and waded through 3-4' of water, tied a rope around the rest of the people and they all walked out.  Luckily no one died or even had a serious injury.

 Loading docks for the tractor trailers

 

 

 Bread Oven

 

Shipping Area

 

 

Storage Room

 Back on the train tracks...anything that could float did float

 

 Water knocked over a holding tank

 

The bakery was closed for about 8 weeks and all the other bakeries around us supplied our bread.  The original side had to be completely updated since most parts were not available anymore.  The company really did some nice things for the employees....anyone that was willing to work at another bakery could do so and the company paid for your room, meals and travel.  While this put them away from their families, they at least still had an income coming in.  They also gave anyone that lost a car at home or at work $1500 and anyone that lost their home $3000.  While this might not seem like much we were not their insurance company and most of the ones that got a check were very appreciative.  As with all good things when someone tries to help there were some that thought we should be handing out $50,000 checks and there were some that didn't lose anything that tried to get money!