Processors Can Minimize Impact When Disaster Strikes — with Proper Planning
Between Hurricane Beryl in early July and the popup tornadoes throughout the Midwest 10 days later, natural disasters have become enough of a regularity that food & beverage processors need to plan for them.
Food & beverage processors might be tempted to bet the odds are slim of a direct hit on their facilities. But as recent history has shown, gambling against Mother Nature is a terrible strategy.
In 2023, a tornado destroyed a significant portion of a Pfizer drug manufacturing facility in Rocky Mount, N.C., that ripped open the roof of the warehouse storage for raw materials, packaging supplies and finished medicine, but thankfully no injuries or deaths were recorded.
In December 2021, a series of storms broke through the lower Midwest and Ohio River Valley, and tornadoes plowed through an Amazon warehouse in Edwardsville, Ill., and leveled a candle processing plant in Mayfield, Ky. Six people died in the Amazon facility, and nine employees were killed in the Mayfield Consumer Products candle facility.
Although these were not food processing facilities, a Frito-Lay distribution center in Dayton, Ohio, took a direct hit by a very strong tornado overnight May 27, 2019, which resulted in the facility being torn down and the company moving. No fatalities were reported, as the tornado passed through during the overnight hours, but lessons from all of these disasters can be learned.
In March of 2019, flooding on the St. Joseph River forced the closure of the Triumph Foods plant in St. Joseph, Mo. Going back to June 2008, historic flooding of the Cedar River took four food-related plants offline: PepsiCo’s Frito-Lay division, Cargill corn milling, Penford Ingredients and Red Star Yeast.
Brian Schupbach, national project director with Commercial Restoration Company (CRC), emphasizes that, although the risk of a disaster might seem slim, preparation and readiness should not be overlooked or taken lightly by executive or plant management, nor by the employees and contractors who work at the facilities.
“Risk managers function to reduce risk, and they’re usually very good at developing an emergency management plan of how to respond to disasters like tornadoes, fires, floods, pipe breaks, etc.” he says. “But if the risk manager at the corporate level isn’t proactive enough to schedule meetings and force the plants to think about it on a quarterly basis, it often just doesn’t happen.”
Devoting time to assessing the company’s financial readiness and preparations can make a difference as well, according to a Mississippi State University Extension publication titled “Disaster Preparedness for Food Businesses: An Overview,” published in 2020.
“Being prepared may not eliminate damages, but it will reduce the impact and facilitate the recovery process,” the authors wrote. “The cost of prevention is generally lower than the cost of dealing with an accident.”
Schupbach says many companies lack vital information in their emergency response plans that often helps mitigate additional damage and speed up the recovery process. For example, it’s critical to know where shutoffs are for utilities such as water, have a digital set of facility plans and understand the facility’s power requirements.
“If the company knows where the blueprints and plans are, where the electrical feeds are, how much power they use — and voltage they use and what transformers it goes through — and where the diagrams for the equipment are, they are already miles ahead of others,” he adds. Risk management should include all of that information in the action plan, including instructions on where the electronic digital plans are and how to access them.
Furthermore — a big threat to food and beverage plants given workforce turnover issues at many plants — the emergency action plan should be kept up to date and any changes properly communicated.
“When and how it gets updated, or when management changes at a facility, there tends to be a disconnect between what the plan says on paper and how it actually gets executed,” Schupbach says. Another area food & beverage facilities can focus on to improve response is in their maintenance departments, where spare parts inventory is typically catered toward operational wear-and-tear on the machinery.
“One of the things a food processing plant could do better is manage the backstop inventory of components essential to equipment that could be damaged in an event,” Schupbach explains.
Making a plan
When developing the emergency action plan and post-event response, Schupbach advises not to overlook employees and managers who may have experienced an event when preparing.
“Within a corporate organization, some people may have had experience with a tornado, fire, hurricane, pipes freezing or water damage, and they would be someone the company can rely on to help prepare for the future,” he says. “Tapping into the experience and knowing what the shortfalls may have been the last time can help you better prepare for the future, and that’s really valuable.”
Even a simple problem can become a disaster in the food & beverage industry, in the form of a loss of electrical power. As Schupbach mentions, power needs should be documented and ready to be used for an extended loss.
The Mississippi State publication highlights the need to source emergency power generators, engage employees in proper training on that equipment and the need for refrigerated trucks or backup cold storage in the event the coolers or freezers are taken out of service for a long period of time. Schupbach cautions that processors need to think beyond their own plants and to have backup plans in place if suppliers are impacted.
“They could be in the Midwest but receive products that come through the Port of New Orleans or the Port of Miami, which are extremely vulnerable,” he says. “They need to include how they’re going to replace supply when their supply chain is disrupted because of a hurricane somewhere else.”
Despite the importance of the operational preparations, keeping employees safe if a disaster occurs or threatens their facility should be the top priority of any manufacturer. The Mississippi State disaster preparedness publication says an emergency action plan ensures a coordinated response, reducing “the number of ‘in-the-moment’ decisions you need to make” and increasing response time. These plans should be drilled frequently enough that employees execute the steps properly without hesitation in order to drive down risk.
Emergency action plans should be developed for each type of potential event that might happen: severe weather, fire, chemical leak, etc. These plans should be checked and updated regularly by risk management and the local emergency response teams as well, and especially when any plant expansions, processing line changes or other modifications are planned.