January 22, 1999 was a day the people of Clarksville, Tennessee will never forget. In the early morning hours, a ferocious tornado swept through the small town located 45 minutes from Nashville and laid to waste almost everything in its path. Miraculously, Clarksville suffered no fatalities, but the damage to residential, commercial and historic property took a heavy toll on the community. The following story recounts the experiences of Bill Albright on the day when Clarksvillians woke to find their town in shambles. Albright is a SERVPRO® franchisee in Clarksville and was instrumental in returning his town to working order.

After the Tornado

        Bill Albright awoke to the sound of his telephone at 5:15 a.m. Mark Wilkie, his production manager, was on the other end of the line asking if Bill and his wife were all right. Confused and sleepy, Albright answered that he was and inquired as to the reason for the question. Wilkie explained that Clarksville had been the victim of a devastating tornado and much of downtown had been ripped apart and scattered across Montgomery County. Alarmed, Albright hung up the phone and began placing calls to all his crews to mobilize and immediately meet at the shop. An extremely intense day of work had begun.
        Albright steered his truck through his still sleeping neighborhood, noting minor damage. But when he crested a hill and saw the remains of a motorcycle dealership and antique store not a quarter-mile from his own shop, his heart sank in dreaded anticipation of his own property’s condition. Fortunately, as he came into sight of his parking lot, he saw the SERVPRO® vans and building had not sustained any damage and that some of his crews had already arrived, ready to work.
        By 6:15 a.m., four full crews began loading five vans for water extraction, tarping and board-ups. Chad Cowan, Albright’s partner, arrived and began contacting key personnel at Austin Peay State University, one of the areas most heavily impacted properties, to secure a place for them in the clean-up process. Preliminary estimates at the University showed at least 18 of the school’s buildings had sustained major damage. Cowan learned that Austin Peay had started the clean-up initiative and met with the Physical Plant Operations Team to coordinate SERVPRO’s efforts with those of the university’s personnel. With the community in such a desperate state, efficient communication was essential.
        For the first day of the loss, they worked on tarping and boarding-up the student housing buildings. Devastating winds had shattered virtually all the windows in most of the facilities and torn the roofs away, leaving the interior of dorm rooms exposed to the elements. As the crews worked on damage mitigation at the assigned buildings, Cowan began to contact additional businesses in the downtown area that had sustained severe damage. In anticipation of an increasing demand for restoration service, Albright contacted SERVPRO Industry Inc.’s headquarters, located in Gallatin, Tennessee.
        Albright spoke with Don Kurdy, the SERVPRO® Catastrophic Loss Team Manager and set up delivery of an additional 600 air movers and 200 dehumidifiers. Albright was assured the equipment could be in Clarksville within 24 hours. Steven Van Hoozer, the Manager of the National Accounts Division had started to advise major insurance companies that SERVPRO® was on-site in Clarksville and would be available to assist with property claims. Furthermore, SERVPRO® Corporate had initiated contact with other franchises across Tennessee to mobilize crews and assist Albright’s efforts in Clarksville. Meanwhile, Chad Cowan had contracted a 90,000-square-foot office building and three additional businesses in downtown Clarksville.
        One of the most inhibiting factors in Albright’s early clean-up initiatives was the fact that electricity was unavailable in almost all of the University’s buildings during the five days following the disaster. Although he had plenty of manpower, all of the restoration equipment ran on electricity and was useless without an alternate power source. Following his conversation with SERVPRO® Corporate, Albright contacted rental suppliers and made arrangements to use 20 generators and reserved another 20 to supply power for the extra equipment the Corporate headquarters would be sending. As a precaution, Albright also reserved two sump pumps and two scissors lifts.
        Land and cellular phone lines in and around Clarksville had also been damaged and Albright had to rely on two-way radios and several cell phones belonging to his employees. The cell phones’ signal came from a tower almost 30 miles from Clarksville, so the phones were operable. This established a weak but functional system of communication among all the crews.
        At the close of the first day, SERVPRO® crew members had tarped 8 buildings and had extracted water from two three-story buildings. The following morning, January 23^rd, five new SERVPRO® crews from around the state arrived to help Albright and his team. With this many crews operating all over the city, Cowan established a SERVPRO® command post in the Austin Peay cafeteria to coordinate job priorities and assignments. The phones remained down on the second day, so Albright had all of his emergency calls forwarded to an answering service. He was able to check the service regularly and disperse crew members to new locations, as needed. In a period of 2 days, Albright received a total of 67 emergency calls requesting tarping and water extraction services. At the time, Albright was managing crews working in numerous buildings at Austin Peay, as well as the 90,000-square-foot office facility downtown, and responding to emergency calls all over the city. Despite the breakneck pace, the company was able to handle all but two of the losses.
        In addition to tarping and extraction assignments, Albright’s Austin Peay crews were contracted to evacuate the professors’ offices. This included books, supplies and personal items. While evacuating the offices, Albright saw first-hand the emotional toll the disaster had taken on many of the people living in Clarksville. The tornado had not only destroyed the buildings, but had ruined all of the belongings within. Tensions were running high, and Albright was charged with maintaining a level of professionalism among his crews, even when they met with frustration and, sometimes, angst from individual victims.
        Working in an assembly-line fashion, team members boxed the contents of each faculty member’s office and marked them for storage. The boxes were then taken to a second-story window, loaded onto a lift and lowered to the ground. Each box was placed in one of four, 40-foot storage trailers brought on-site to hold the belongings until the building was fully dried and restored.
        By 3:00 p.m. on January 23, five trucks with truck mounts had successfully extracted all of the standing water from the 90,000-square-foot office building and had started the drying process. SERVPRO® Corporate delivered the first truckload of air movers and dehumidifiers earlier that same day. The SERVPRO® CAT Manager worked with Albright on strategic positioning of the equipment, maximizing its efficiency in terms of drying and making the most of limited electrical availability.
        At Austin Peay, Albright still had crews extracting water and evacuating buildings. Even with team members working 14-hour shifts, the scope of the damage required a great deal more work. Additional support from the crews now finished with the office facility strengthened the effort tremendously.
        On Sunday, January 24, the restoration effort suffered a setback in the form of a heavy rainstorm. Due to massive openings in the roof structures, temporary tarping sprung leaks and made additional repairs necessary, as well as forcing water extraction crews back into the buildings that had already been dried. Meanwhile, the University had set an aggressive schedule for resuming classes. Albright’s crews, along with numerous construction companies, school personnel and community volunteers, pooled their efforts to meet the deadline. Team members worked long hours to restore the buildings to a condition which would be safe for the return of students. Other volunteers helped to remove at least 80 fallen trees and hand-raked the debris left behind.
        At 8:00 a.m. on January 26, Austin Peay students returned to classes, as scheduled, only 6 days after the tornado had devastated the campus. Employees in the 90,000-square-foot office building also returned to work that week.

Major Challenges

        The first two weeks of the restoration effort were frantic. One of the biggest challenges team members faced was fatigue. For two weeks, the crews worked 14-hour days at full speed. To combat the obvious difficulties of such a demanding pace, Albright alternated work schedules and supplied his crew with snacks and meals to give them energy.
        Another challenge was operating quickly under restricted travel conditions. The Clarksville Police Department had taken the necessary precautions to regulate travel and access to damaged areas, which meant all personnel had to be cleared upon entering work sites. This hindered efficiency, but remained an essential procedure for general safety.
        Finally, due to the extent of the damage, Albright’s vans continually suffered flat tires from nails and other sharp bits of debris. Each flat tire had to be handled personally by workers with compressors and fix-a-flat sprays, which took precious time away from the clean-up effort.
        Bill Albright's and Chad Cowan’s work at Austin Peay State University is still underway, but their team pulled together and helped get the school back into operation in record time. The intense pace of the cleanup has slowed down dramatically, but it will be some time before Clarksville is completely returned to the small, charming town it was before January 22, 1999. Fortunately, citizens and business owners like Bill Albright share a sense of commitment to restoring their community as quickly as possible.
        As for Albright and his partner Chad Cowan, they express a great deal of pride in the work they have accomplished since that fateful day. Key factors in the quick mobilization and precision execution of the clean-up effort included: SERVPRO® Corporate’s unlimited supply of equipment; additional franchise crews from around Tennessee; qualified supervisors and sales personnel who knew how to reach out to a community in need; and Albright’s extensive disaster restoration training.
        Having the worst of the Clarksville disaster behind him, Albright is ready for the next disaster. His team will be able to respond swiftly and effectively – no matter what the circumstances.

© ASCR, 1999. Reprinted with permission of the Association of Specialists in Cleaning and Restoration, 8229 Cloverleaf Dr., #460, Millersville, MD 21108-1538.