Linda Johnson
Wheatsfield General Manager
August 14, 2020
On Monday, August 10 at about 11am, the Co-op lost power due to the Derecho that blew through Ames. Power wasn’t restored at the store until noon on Thursday and in the period of time that we were without power we lost most our inventory of perishable products including, frozen, produce, bakery, cheese, meat and refrigerated items. We were able to offer some of the usable products to the public for free to avoid all of it going into the dumpster.
The Co-op has insurance to cover most of the damaged product, lost income, employee wages and other contingent expenses due to the power outage and we are working to get a significant claim filed for our losses today. We were able to order a small amount of replacement product for delivery today and will continue to refill our empty shelves as quickly as possible.
We want to thank our IT consultant, Jeremy Bents from Bents Consulting for all the help he provided with a generator and his expertise in protecting our IT equipment from damage during the outage, Jerry and Chris Nelson from Nelson Electric for working hard on Wednesday afternoon into Thursday to find a generator to power the store so we that we could open only to have the power come back on as they were preparing to deliver it and hook it up, and to our refrigeration contractor, Marick Incorporated for their help in protecting our refrigeration equipment during the outage and getting all of the equipment back up and running when the power was restored. Thanks also to Aaron Christensen from Waste Management who was able to schedule additional trash pickups to accommodate the product that was unusable and had to be destroyed. We are grateful to the managers and staff who cleared shelves of product and cleaned up the mess that was inevitable with a loss of this magnitude.
We appreciate all of the phone calls and messages of support that we received once the power was restored yesterday and want you to know that we are working hard to be able to serve your needs in the store and with curbside pickup in the days ahead.
We keep all of our community members who are still without power and who are dealing with damage in our thoughts. A final thank you to the utility workers and the City of Ames for working to get everyone back up and running with electricity!
By |2020-08-15T14:01:34-05:00August 15th, 2020|Categories: Blog|

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One Comment

  1. Stephanie BadSoldier Snow August 24, 2020 at 10:34 am - Reply

    In case of another possible weather event, is the Co-op considering donating food items before they have to be thrown away? Do we need to think about finding grant funds to purchase a generator? Could we member-owners think about “rounding up” our food purchases for that purpose-to get a generator?

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