To keep this OT, I will first discuss "Stinky". After three years of wrestling with an 8000-pound impish diesel, he was driving well enough to take a break from the truck wrenches, focus on work wrenches, and start stockpiling Buck$Zooka ammo.

The first six month of this new plan saw crazy hours put into the cherry packing lines, including a new 12 million dollar line with all the latest gizmos to reduce the need for personnel. This was not an effort to cut jobs, this was a needed measure to make the most of what few people we could acquire to run the line and meet the production schedule.

The last month was spent pouring all my efforts (and time) into $400,000 worth of upgrades and repairs to the packing equipment in Plant 1 at work. Everything went online yesterday, packing 500 bins of the very first pick of apples. Swiping my hands together at 2:00 PM yesterday, I declared "Mission Accomplished" and drove 30 miles to the next project in another plant. 1 hour later I got the call that Plant 1 had been evacuated because of an encroaching wildfire.

It was an anxious night, and when I woke up at 2:45 this morning, I found a picture of P building, with Plant 1 in the background:




Oh... and the wildfire jumped the Columbia river. This puts the new cherry line in danger.

They are aggressively trying to keep this from spreading:


Just to get back OT, I'll share what my wife found for me:

 

Best of luck to you guys, I hope all goes well with the plant and Stinky!

 

Yeah, nothin like dealing with 2 major burns in your hood in less than a month. My Cousin drives one of those flying water wagons in your second picture. he's flown more hours in 120 days, than his entire time in the sandbox for Uncle Sam. Stay Safe.....

 

Just when you thought you had things under control...never seems to fail...when all is going well keep a lookout, something's coming.

 

I've been trying to learn what I can from 45 miles away (where I live), and the news is never good when I reach a coworker. The whole area is without power. Very interesting, since they have their own hydroelectric dam - meaning all the power lines are down. No internet, sporadic cell service, no open roads - Chelan is an island in a sea of fire. I can reach one coworker that lives in Chelan, and I'm his main source of info, because I have internet, power, and his number. He's working on getting a phone charger for his cell that can plug into the car - he left his in the company truck. That company truck was just out of sight behind the building in the photo above.

I've heard from multiple sources that losing the power killed the water pressure to the hydrants - so the firemen are pretty much spectators at this point. I've also heard that we lost Plant 1 - our biggest hitter for production by a very wide margin. In fact, it was the most productive line for about a 100-mile radius... and I just lost a month of knocking myself out to get everything in that building ready for the harvest we've just started.

Maybe now would be a good time to take a vacation. At least I just got paid yesterday, and I have some money saved up until the company can turn on the computers to issue checks again. I don't believe there will be lay-offs. We were running short-staffed on every line, so now we have enough people to fully staff every remaining line and shift. This is gunna get weird.

 

If the lines burn to the ground is it job security or game over?

Could the packers/growers recover from the loss?

 

We have one major line and our primary shipping complex somewhat close to plant 1, but not in any real danger - as far as I know. The distances to the other lines are measured with an odometer, not a pedometer... so they can pack... eventually. Without power at Plant 2 and shipping, company networking, the packing materials stored in the burned buildings, or those 65,000 bins we lost - packing may be delayed on all the lines for a few days.

The company is huge, and while this is a deep wound - it's not likely a mortal blow. Even if it were a terminal prognosis for the company, that would make me a free agent. Selfish thought there, but putting that issue to bed in my mind allows me to focus on what I can contribute to salvage the situation - before that particular cliff emerges from the smokey view of the future.

 

Yikes! Sucks to have your handiwork literally go up in smoke like that, feelz for ya Rich. I hope it burns out and the threat recedes so you can get some sleep tonight.

There might be a lot of work for Stinky in the clean up and repair phases.

For a moment the pic made my eyes bug out, then I realized the propane tank is not ringed by flame, just the angle made it appear so. Whew!

 

Yeah... that tank is a big sucker - it's hard to judge scale in the photo. It's about 30-35 feet long and about 8 feet high... best guess. Here's an old photo I took from a different angle, when I was looking at a dust storm.

 

Hmmmm, and you were looking for some spare time from work less than a month ago......You must be careful what you wish for Master Tugly.....

 

Unfortunately, this actually has the potential to make things worse. I'll be involved with doing what we can to make the other lines faster and more reliable - without creating down time (working weekends and wee-hours). I'll also be involved in the recovery or rebuild process at Plant 1.

 

Crap. Double crap. All that hard work, and 7 years invested into optimizing the equipment in this room (think of it as a hand-crafted 1000 HP 7.3L).

 

Sorry to hear about recent events. Best of luck getting it put back together and up and running

 

That will not buff out, sorry to say.

Since I'm an incurable optimist, allow me to point out that you will never be blamed for any failures or down time on that production line.

If you have the stomach for it, please share the status once you get a good look at it Monday.

 

Best of luck to you and that town. Stay safe!