As you may know, and as written about earlier in this blog, on Thursday May 22, about noon, an F-3 tornado went directly over the building in which I work in Windsor, CO. The storm took out the electricity, with severe damage to the high voltage towers, several substations, and hundreds of poles in the region. The tornado severely damaged the plant-site cooling tower, where they make hot and cold water and steam for manufacturing processes. (NEW LIVE VIDEO!) It damaged the HVAC (ventilation systems) in our building complex, including the Carestream Health sensitizing machine where we make photographic products (XRAY film, Color Paper, Ink Jet Paper). It flipped over several cars in the parking lot, ripped out many trees, and broke lots of windows. The site was closed on Friday May 23 - Monday May 26 (memorial day weekend). Everyone reported to work on Tuesday May 27, where they had several huge generators providing power to part of the building at a time, no ventilation, pallet loads of bottled water, and free lunch! All production workers and staff were put to work cleaning everywhere that was found to be safe for asbestos in the air, and on the horizontal surfaces. Most of the building did have such contamination, from the asbestos insulation that was blown onto the ceiling surfaces when the building was built in the late 1960's. The tornado knocked lots of it loose, and the high wind swirling through the knocked-out windows spread it everywhere. Two highly trained asbestos contamination removal firms were brought in to clean up the dust, and to test the areas until the levels were found to be below the allowable limits. Finally, last Wednesday - late afternoon - I was allowed back in my microscopy lab, to begin my own cleaning (without power - used my Christmas-present headlamp!). On Thursday morning (one week after the tornado), the full power was restored to the plant site, and I was back on the job! All areas were asbestos safe, and work began in earnest to restore the production facilities. I took Friday off to go to the state Republican convention, but last I heard they anticipated making product today (Sunday, June 1). They will be functioning on a portable hot / cold water and stream unit for several months. I am on call today, to help troubleshoot if they have problems or make defective XRAY film when they start up. Thank the Lord, our company made the decision to pay us in full for the entire time that the building was down; many area businesses did not do that for their employees. My poor little 1989 Ford Aerostar van has a terribly damaged windshield and I have taped plexiglas over the drivers door window and passenger side sliding door windows that were blown out. I will get the windshield replaced, but without comprehensive insurance on this old vehicle I hate to spend money on the side windows. This van is too old and feeble to put money into, and too good to junk. I'm not sure what to do about it yet. THanks the Lord, we had no lasting damage at our house, just 12 miles from the tornado path.
