Steve Katz, Editor01.18.16
San Diego, California is well known for having near-perfect weather. On average, there are 266 sunny pays per year, and yearly rainfall is only about 10 inches per year, far below the 37 inches the rest of the US experiences annually.
On January 6, 2016, the region did not have its usually idyllic weather. On this day, some areas of San Diego county had recorded rainfall amounts well over two inches. In fact, the conditions were so horrendous, that Robert Parker, president and owner of Label King, a label manufacturer in San Diego, gave his employees the option of going home early.
“It was around three o’clock, and most of our first shift was punching out,” recalls Parker. “And then all of a sudden, our cellphones started going off – sounding an alert that there was a tornado warning for the area.”
Severe weather and potentially catastrophic storms just don’t come to Southern California, so when the tornado warning came and urged residents to “shelter-in-place,” it was certainly a shock, but only a sign of what was about to happen at Label King.
“The rain was tremendous,” Parker says, “But the warning was called off after about 15 minutes. I told everyone to go home and be safe. A lot of people left, and our second shift arrived.
“And then we noticed the water. Right outside our front door, water started getting higher and higher, and then it started leaking through the door. It came right in, where all of our computers are. Our office staff – as quickly as they could – were trying to unhook the computers, but I saw there was no time – the water was coming in so fast. So I said, ‘Just pull the cords out!’ If we had waited 15 more seconds the computers would have been gone.”
Parker and his crew were able to pull everything up from the front office, just in the nick of time. “But then the water started flowing down the hallway,” he says. “I determined there were certain areas more important than others, and places in the facility we needed to keep from getting wet.
“We used squeegee mops and push brooms to direct the water away from the shop floor and into the conference room and bathrooms. We had to protect the press room floor, so multiple people were directing water in different directions to protect our most important assets. We made a few barriers to keep the water by the front door and the bathrooms, and then bucketed the water out the door and also used the bathroom drains. We were just doing the best we can to keep the water out of our warehouse and pressroom.”
Parker and his makeshift emergency crew – which included much of his second shift production staff – succeeded in saving Label King’s printing equipment, supplies, computers and office records. While it wasn’t something he could ever plan, Parker says, “It turned out to be a great team-building exercise with everyone rallying and working together.”
“And then power went out,” Parker says, “and we continued working in the dark, cleaning up, and drying everything off.”
Lucky for Label King, one of its neighbors has a cleaning service, and let Parker and his crew borrow a $20,000 steam cleaner.
“All told, we shut down at 3:30 PM on Wednesday, and were back open at 8 AM Thursday morning. And we were all cleaned up five hours after the floodwaters entered our building. In fact, our second shift was printing labels later that night!
“We couldn’t have been more fortunate – from the steam cleaner to saving our production floor – and no computers, paperwork or printing plates were damaged. If it weren’t for the efforts of our people, we would have suffered a lot of damage,” Parker says.
The next day, Parker ordered a bunch of sandbags, which have since been palletized and are ready to go should another flood situation arise.
Loking back, Parker says the event provided a great adrenaline rush. “It was actually kind of fun,” he says. “But it’s not something that we want to happen again. We were really lucky, and it was a day we will remember for a long time.”
Label King was featured in the April, 2015 issue of Label & Narrow Web. To learn more about the company's history, capabilities and sense of humor, read the L&NW Narrow Web profile.
For more images from the Label King's flood, check out the L&NW slideshow.
On January 6, 2016, the region did not have its usually idyllic weather. On this day, some areas of San Diego county had recorded rainfall amounts well over two inches. In fact, the conditions were so horrendous, that Robert Parker, president and owner of Label King, a label manufacturer in San Diego, gave his employees the option of going home early.
“It was around three o’clock, and most of our first shift was punching out,” recalls Parker. “And then all of a sudden, our cellphones started going off – sounding an alert that there was a tornado warning for the area.”
Severe weather and potentially catastrophic storms just don’t come to Southern California, so when the tornado warning came and urged residents to “shelter-in-place,” it was certainly a shock, but only a sign of what was about to happen at Label King.
“The rain was tremendous,” Parker says, “But the warning was called off after about 15 minutes. I told everyone to go home and be safe. A lot of people left, and our second shift arrived.
“And then we noticed the water. Right outside our front door, water started getting higher and higher, and then it started leaking through the door. It came right in, where all of our computers are. Our office staff – as quickly as they could – were trying to unhook the computers, but I saw there was no time – the water was coming in so fast. So I said, ‘Just pull the cords out!’ If we had waited 15 more seconds the computers would have been gone.”
Parker and his crew were able to pull everything up from the front office, just in the nick of time. “But then the water started flowing down the hallway,” he says. “I determined there were certain areas more important than others, and places in the facility we needed to keep from getting wet.
“We used squeegee mops and push brooms to direct the water away from the shop floor and into the conference room and bathrooms. We had to protect the press room floor, so multiple people were directing water in different directions to protect our most important assets. We made a few barriers to keep the water by the front door and the bathrooms, and then bucketed the water out the door and also used the bathroom drains. We were just doing the best we can to keep the water out of our warehouse and pressroom.”
Parker and his makeshift emergency crew – which included much of his second shift production staff – succeeded in saving Label King’s printing equipment, supplies, computers and office records. While it wasn’t something he could ever plan, Parker says, “It turned out to be a great team-building exercise with everyone rallying and working together.”
“And then power went out,” Parker says, “and we continued working in the dark, cleaning up, and drying everything off.”
Lucky for Label King, one of its neighbors has a cleaning service, and let Parker and his crew borrow a $20,000 steam cleaner.
“All told, we shut down at 3:30 PM on Wednesday, and were back open at 8 AM Thursday morning. And we were all cleaned up five hours after the floodwaters entered our building. In fact, our second shift was printing labels later that night!
“We couldn’t have been more fortunate – from the steam cleaner to saving our production floor – and no computers, paperwork or printing plates were damaged. If it weren’t for the efforts of our people, we would have suffered a lot of damage,” Parker says.
The next day, Parker ordered a bunch of sandbags, which have since been palletized and are ready to go should another flood situation arise.
Loking back, Parker says the event provided a great adrenaline rush. “It was actually kind of fun,” he says. “But it’s not something that we want to happen again. We were really lucky, and it was a day we will remember for a long time.”
Label King was featured in the April, 2015 issue of Label & Narrow Web. To learn more about the company's history, capabilities and sense of humor, read the L&NW Narrow Web profile.
For more images from the Label King's flood, check out the L&NW slideshow.