Storm Stories: Adapting for survival

Harter House

Harter House’s Republic Road location kept power throughout the ice storm, but its location off East Sunshine Street was not as fortunate. Co-owner Barbara Bettlach said all of the store’s stocked perishable items had to be discarded. She said the replacement costs were unclear, and insurance would defray most of the expense.

Next up was cleaning. “There has to be cleaning before you can restock,” Bettlach said. “But you can’t clean until the lights come back on. The next problem was the suppliers – you don’t just get that much food in an hour. You have to put in an order at least two days in advance.”

The east Springfield store was not able to reopen until Jan. 17.

Rapid Robert’s

Unleaded gasoline was hard to come by in the immediate wake of the ice storm.

Springfield-based Rapid Robert’s tried to keep up with customer demand, but it found most stores either had fuel but no electricity or had power but ran out of fuel – a situation seen at many stations across town.

To keep its pumps full, owner Rob Wilson attempted to bring in gasoline from the company’s primary and secondary terminals in Mount Vernon and Brookline, but both were down. Wilson’s trucks finally found luck at a third terminal in Jasper.

At the few Rapid Robert’s stations that had both power and gas, such as the store at the Sunshine and Campbell intersection, car lines snaked through parking lots and around buildings.

“It’s almost borderline chaos,” Wilson said. “It almost (brings) kind of a panic mentality.”

Wilson’s stations also had sold out of most convenience items – especially coffee.

Watts Radiant

The manufacturer of radiant-floor heating and snow-melting equipment didn’t initially lose power, though about half of the company’s employees couldn’t get to work on Jan. 15 or 16. The company’s power outage came on Friday, Jan. 19; co-owner Dan Chiles said the company had to send its employees home that day.

While the company only missed “a couple of shipments,” officials took the downtime to re-examine backup systems; Chiles said a backup power system will be installed on the company’s roof in coming months for future emergencies.

The biggest impact, however, will probably be down the road – Chiles said this storm will have a positive effect on the company as people begin new construction projects.

“Everybody who was running a generator and trying to operate a big blower on their furnace is now aware of how much energy it takes to move air around a house,” Chiles said, noting that his company’s radiant heat systems use small circulators to move air, using less energy.