Polaris and Roseau Flooding

[Sparky_Bill]

They are trying up there to save the plant and they think the town is doomed but want to keep the largest employer open so they can build again. What a hopeless feeling to see your homes go under water and little you can do. The mess the river leaves behind.

[Swiffer]

That's terrible! I hope I never have to go through flooding like that...not alot you can do. Old Mother Nature still rules even with all our technology.

Steve

[Choirguy]

Polaris CEO on the scene fighting the flood
Deborah Caulfield Rybak
Star Tribune

Published Jun 13, 2002
Instead of monitoring the flooding from his company's headquarters in Medina, Polaris President and CEO Tom Tiller has been fighting on the front lines in Roseau since Tuesday morning.

"Yesterday when we got to work, we figured out that it was a very serious situation, so we immediately flew up," Tiller said this morning. Since then, he's been busy packing sandbags, coordinating with the emergency response people and directing heavy equipment."

Interviewed via cell phone, Tiller said there was good news and bad.

"The good news is that everybody's safe--and that's the most important thing. Plus, they tell me that the river has crested and may be declining by now.

"But the town and its infrastructure are in a very difficult situation," he added. "Basically almost all of the homes and businesses are flooded. There's about four feet of water running down Main Street."

Tiller said workers were successful in saving three things in town: the hospital, the school, and the Polaris plant, where 1,800 people from Roseau and surrounding communities work.

"I was here all night with about 500 people building a barrier around the entire building -- and it's about a half-million square feet," he said, estimating that it took about 500,000 sandbags to make the barrier.

Support came from the company's other four facilities, he added. "People worked all night flying up generators and 90,000 sandbags and pumps and all the other stuff we needed."

At the flood's peak, "there was about three feet of water at the front door," Tiller said, though damage inside was minor: "We had an inch or two inside."

Of critical concern to the team of executives that flew up to Roseau were the computers located on the premises. "The computers that run the whole company -- not just Roseau -- are up here. If those had gotten wet it would have been a very bad thing. Running a manufacturing facility without a computer is just about impossible."

But Tiller made it clear that his main concern rested with his workers and their town of 2,700 people.

"It's our biggest issue. We have maybe 1,000 employees who live right in town and while they still have homes, they are very wet homes right now."

As he reflected on his employee's efforts to help save the Polaris plant, Tiller's voice broke. "If I wasn't so tired, I'd be crying right now. It's such a terrible, human catastrophe, but through the whole ordeal I did not see a single person complaining. Everyone was working together in a way that just made me extremely proud, not just for the plant, but for the town.

"In any disaster, people come together, but this one was just incredible. I'm very, very proud and thankful for our Polaris employees. There's a relationship between the company and the company that goes back 48 years and it's truly special."

Tiller acknowledged it was his first time fighting a flood, "It's not generally in a CEO's job description. I'm sitting here in waders and rain gear; I stink and I'm dirty and I could probably use a shower. We were joking that the executive parking spot right now was an ATV out in the middle of the mud."

He was more somber when reflecting on the devastation around him.

"When Mother Nature decides that it's going to rain real hard and the water's going to go up, there's not a whole heck of a lot that we can do about it," he said. "At one point there was so much water that we had four pumps going. They pumped about 30,000 gallons a minute, which is enough to fill a swimming pool. We were pumping a swimming pool's worth of water a minute and we couldn't stop the water from going up.

"But the people are fine and we can clean up the mud. It'll take some times, but we'll get through."

Polaris' stock dropped sharply on flood reports. As of 11:30 a.m. today, the stock was down $3 to $68 over concern for canceled production shifts in Roseau. However, Polaris will be able to make up for lost time in future quarters, the company said.