Jamie Wilkins, plant manager at SAF-Holland Haldex Reman in Marion, N.C., lived in Florida and moved to the mountains of western North Carolina in 2009 after a lifetime of hurricanes. As Hurricane Helene barreled toward her family in Florida, Wilkins wasn’t too worried about herself more than 500 miles away.
“My first thought was nothing really bad is going to happen,” she says. “We didn’t really expect anything huge.”
But it was huge. More than 30 inches of rain fell on western North Carolina as the Category 4 storm roared up from the Florida panhandle. More than 73,000 homes were damaged, the state of North Carolina says, and more than 100 people died. Floods, landslides and tornadoes tore through the mountains, causing widespread damage to roads, power lines and other infrastructure.
Jamie Wilkins, left, plant manager at Haldex Reman in Marion, N.C., and Jeremy Cable, product manager, show some of the parts the plan remanufactures.
Wilkins was at home in Old Fort, N.C., with her children. She realized how bad it was going to be once they heard the wind howling and the trees snapping.
“OK, this is real,” she thought. “We’re in it.”
That’s when she started thinking of what this is going to look like afterward.
Before the storm
Nathan Duncan is Haldex Reman’s director of operations for remanufacturing and friction.
“Living here all my life, hurricanes that hit the Gulf, they do make a beeline for the mountains,” Duncan says. “Some of the worst floods we’ve ever had here have been from the Gulf.”
That said, no one thought of the devastation Helene wrought.
“Planning for something that bad, nobody could’ve planned for it,” Duncan says. “It was so bad and it hit so many things.”
Nathan Duncan, who grew up in western North Carolina, still gets emotional talking about Hurricane Helene.
Duncan and his team made the decision to shut the plant down for a day. After the shift on Thursday, Sept. 26, Wilkins told her staff of around 60 to stay home Friday.
“Just say a little prayer and we’ll keep in touch,” she says, having no way of knowing just how difficult it would be.
Planning for a disaster
Christy Jones is a SCORE volunteer and former auto body shop owner in Des Moines, Iowa.
SCORE, previously the Service Corps of Retired Executives, is a nonprofit organization that provides free mentoring and resources to small business owners and entrepreneurs.
Jones has plenty of experience with disasters and points out disasters don’t just fall from the sky. In 1996, one of her shops burned to the ground. Her company also had supply chain disasters, such as their paint supplier not being able to supply paint, and everyone remembers COVID-19.
The SAF-Holland Haldex Reman plant in Marion, N.C., has more than 60 employees.
The U.S. Small Business Administration, which partners with SCORE, has a checklist for business owners before a disaster happens. It includes:
- Creating an in-case-of-emergency list and assign a key person, someone who can manage the business in an emergency. The key person should have essential information about the business, including the location of important documents and contact information of key people, such as accountants, attorneys and vendors.
- Meet with an insurance agent for a full policy review to ensure adequate coverage. Keep the proof of coverage secure and accessible. Jones says insurance agents should be part of any business owner’s close professional circle.
“Have those professional people surrounding you and make sure you’re talking to them on a regular basis,” she says. “You’re paying them on a regular basis, you should be talking to them on a regular basis.” - Have a waterproof and fireproof safe deposit box for hard files and keep important files and business EIN secure inside. Keep a copy of important documents, including lease agreements and deeds, in the cloud.
- Ensure sure access to the current year’s and previous year’s state and federal tax returns. For new businesses, keep an updated copy of a profit-and-loss statement and a personal financial statement.
Jones urges business owners to think of everything: What if the power went out for a week? What if I can’t get supplies? What if a major piece of equipment fails? And, like at Haldex, what if your location is fine but your employees aren’t?
Friday, Sept. 27
As the sun rose on Friday, Helene unleashed her fury. Interstate 40 was partially washed away, as were the practically the whole towns of Montreat (22 miles west of Marion), Swannanoa (26 miles west of Marion). In Asheville, a curfew was issued and across the state, rainfall records were shattered.
In Wilkins’ hometown of Old Fort, the Catawba River washed the center of town away along with parts of I-40, cutting off access to the town for days. Wilkins and her family drove for 2.5 hours for a trip that would normally take 15 minutes to find cell phone service. After telling her family they were OK, she started calling her Haldex family.
The plant didn’t have a specific plan for hurricanes, being hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean, but they did have contact information for employees.
Employees celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Haldex Reman plant in Marion, N.C.
“It wasn’t necessarily to come back to work,” Wilkins says. “In this situation, it was ‘You’re our family. We want to make sure you’re safe. If there’s something you need, we want to get it for you.’”
Wilkins, Duncan and others met at the plant to evaluate the facility, which was remarkably undamaged. As they talked in the parking lot, the power came back on, enabling the company to use the plant to help care for its employees. They contacted the last of the unaccounted-for employees on Monday and were back up and running by Oct. 1.
Unfortunately, most of the infrastructure around the plant wasn’t, including the Internet, which is critical to shipping finished parts out to Haldex Reman’s clients.
“We run a fairly manual operation here, anyway,” Duncan says. “Going to total documentation was not a big stretch for us.”
The plan the team came up with was to continue work in Marion, but have an employee run down to the plant’s sister facility in Columbia, S.C., 2.5 hours away, to print labels and drive them back to Marion. They called it the pony express, and it ran for a little more than a week until an Internet solution could be found.
‘It takes a village’
Jones says that kind of cooperation between locations — or even competitors — is key to keeping a business running in trying times.
When her location burned, she says industry colleagues “came out of the woodwork,” opening up equipment and locations to help her and her staff get the work done.
“Being active in your industry is critical,” she says. “If no one knows who you are, they don’t know if they can help you. It takes a village, at that point. It takes the weight off.”
Jones also urges business owners to not only make a plan, but update it was situations develop. She had the local police departments train her employees about what to do should they encounter an active shooter. Over time, how experts told people to respond changed, and if her staff ever faced a situation they could’ve responded improperly, she says.
Businesses should also try to have, whenever possible, multichannel communication with their employees, but also with vendors and clients as well. Update the information on a regular schedule.
“Most employers don’t communicate with people unless they’re at work, so make sure you can communicate outside of work,” Jones says. For clients, you don’t have to update frequently but be proactive about it. “This is what happened and these are our next steps.”
Insurance companies and government aid can both take a while to kick in. Businesses should also plan to have some sort of fiscal support, Jones says, as cash flow can quickly go to zero or even negative in the wake of a disaster.
“Put your patience pants on,” she says. “Insurance companies do not move quickly.”
Jones advises businesses to have current photos and notes about equipment and facilities. After a disaster, document any damage with photos and notes as well. Keep any receipts in the wake of a disaster and make meticulous notes of income and expenses.
She suggests updating response plans once a year or whenever there’s a major change in the business, such as a new computer system, new leadership or a new product line or equipment purchase. Jones also encourages redundancy whenever possible, from infrastructure needs such as adding Starlink at Haldex to supplier lists and equipment providers.
Also, be mindful and flexible for your workforce during what may be a stressful time.
“Even without disasters, people come to work in a mental health crisis,” she says. “Adding a disaster on top of that is pretty critical.”
As much as possible, Jones says businesses should try to be flexible with requirements and scheduling. Communicate early and often and be as proactive and compassionate as you can.
“If you can, be human,” she says. “I know we’ve got rules and plans and regulations, but try to be human. You’re paying for their mortgage, in a way. You’re paying for the meal on their table. You have a responsibility to provide for them.”
Ready for the next one
Brett Dinger is the reman product manager at Haldex. He hadn’t been with the company long when Helene struck and is based in Kansas City. Watching from afar, he was worried when he couldn’t reach any of the team on the ground in Marion, who were marooned away from the parent company, SAF-Holland.
As communications slowly came back online, Dinger and the rest of the corporate team found out about the dire situation in western North Carolina. Dinger said it was a big relief when he found out all of the employees were safe, but there was work to do.
“I guess it was so bad that going to work kind of helped you through it,” Duncan says. He still gets emotional talking about it. “If you stopped and actually looked around, it’s heartbreaking.”
Winkler said Helene opened up SAF-Holland and Haldex as a whole to the importance of disaster planning. The parent company sent fliers on disaster preparedness and disaster toolkits to all of its sites and helped communicate with Haldex Reman’s customers and suppliers. Plus, it sent supplies directly to Marion for employees and their families, such as batteries, solar showers, wipes and more.
“We can be kind of a post for our employees and our families,” Winkler says. “We’re definitely prepared now if something were to happen. We know who to reach out to.”
