Tragedy from the sky

 Quick response helps Foremost Farms rebound after airplane slams into plant

Patrick Duffey
USDA Rural Development

t was the most unlikely of tragedies, but one which the rest of the nation would soon experience, magnified many times over. One minute all was serene and it was business as usual at Foremost Farms’ Morning Glory dairy processing plant at De Pere, Wis., near Green Bay. But then, without warning, a jet airplane plunged from the sky and slammed into the side of the plant. Smoke, fire, confusion and death followed. Miraculously, only a single life—that of the pilot—was lost in the tragedy. But a number of employees suffered burns when flaming jet fuel spewed from the ruptured tank; three people suffered severe burns.

The incident gave co-op employees and members a terrible taste of the turmoil and agony the rest of the nation has experienced in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The courageous efforts of rescue and aid workers, the victims and their families, the coop’s other employees and the support of the community also set an example of how to recover from a tragedy.

The noise and rushing of emergency vehicles along Glory Road that late afternoon in early April and the subsequent rush of reconstruction activity have now subsided. The Morning Glory Dairy was back in operation four months after that disastrous day—three weeks ahead of a projected Labor Day opening.

Quiet day shattered
The quiet atmosphere during a spring snow shower and fog was loudly interrupted about 4:30 p.m. Monday, April 2, 2000. A twin-engine corporate jet laden with a full tank of fuel had taken off moments earlier from Green Bay’s Austin Straubel International Air- port, for a non-stop journey to Fort Myers, Fla. The 54-year-old pilot, the only one on board, had just radioed the airport’s control tower, indicating problems with the plane. He said he wanted to return to the airport, just two miles away, for a visual landing.


Witnesses said his plane was tilted on its left side as it careened into the roof and ripped open half the south wall of the three-story cooler adjacent to the dairy’s bottling plant. It plunged well into the interior, with the impact rupturing the plane’s fuel tanks. The resulting explosion and fire caused nearly $6 million in damage to the structure and contents. The blast also destroyed a group of trailers parked nearby. The pilot was killed and seven of 15 employees in the dairy’s cooler building at the time were injured. Three employees with severe burns were transferred to Milwaukee, but made it home for continued recuperation by early June.



Emergency calls for assistance
The impact bounced Tim Decker, the dairy’s human resources and safety manager, out of his office chair. He heard a loud boom and felt the building shudder. When he looked out his back window, he saw flames and smoke coming from the cooler building. The fire alarms went off immediately. Luckily, the accident occurred while several employees were waiting for an order, so there were fewer people present in the area at the time.

Amid the confusion, both he and Wally Heil, operations manager, made separate calls to the Brown County Public Safety Communications and asked them to send fire and rescue units to the Morning Glory Dairy because of an explosion and fire. During an extended conversation with the dispatcher, Decker tried to relate what limited details he knew about the emergency at the dairy, where Foremost employs 187 people. Neither he nor Heil knew at the time that a plane had crashed into the building.

Heil had just left the cooler plant with product samples and was headed for the opposite side of the dairy. “I heard the boom, the cooler building shook and I saw heavy black smoke. I checked to see if evacuation was in progress and then went to the predesignated emergency assembly site. All cooler employees had been evacuated and had followed the safety program taught at all the Foremost plants.”

Rescue teams were the first to arrive at the scene but pulled back for the fireman once they learned all the employees were out of the building. This allowed the firefighters to immediately begin fighting the fire.

Jeff Koehler, general manager at the De Pere plant—sandwiched in an industrial park in the Village of Ashwaubenon, which borders both Green Bay and De Pere—notified Foremost officials at Baraboo and regulatory agencies. At first, no one knew what caused the accident and explosion. Then, the 911 emergency dispatcher told Heil a plane may have crashed in the area. Suddenly things made sense.

The response from the Ashwaubenon and airport fire crews, state patrol and ambulance services, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), state departments of natural resources, agriculture and commerce, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and contractors was overwhelming, Heil says. As part of its investigation, NTSB collected and assembled fragments of the plane at a local warehouse to examine and determine the cause of the crash.



Quick rebound to rebuild
The original contractor was on the scene late that same night and made an inventory assessment, and replacement steel was on site by April 20. It was one of many quick steps that eventually brought the cooperative’s operation back into production on an advanced schedule. After a salvage team finished clearing the site, the dairy’s employees, along with regulatory officials, moved quickly to restore some of the lost production capacity.

Before the crash, the De Pere plant had been producing nearly 500,000 gallons of fluid milk a week, primarily under Foremost’s Morning Glory and Golden Guernsey brands, but also for some private label customers. It also produced 1 million pounds of sour cream for food service and marketplace accounts. The cooperative’s other bottling operation at Waukesha near Milwaukee was pressed into supplementary service until the De Pere cooler could be rebuilt and returned to full service.

Extensive support
Don Storhoff, then Foremost’s chief executive officer, called Ed Books, chairman of the board, and told him about the accident. The rest of the board was informed by letter. No special meeting of the board was needed because a regular session had been scheduled soon after the accident. Storhoff headed a management team that visited the site that evening.

The next evening, Wisconsin Governor Scott McCallum and his Secretaries of Health and Human Services and Workforce Development visited the site to assess the damage and show support for the cooperative and its employees.

The entire operation was disabled for only two days, Heil said. “We made some temporary structural modifications which enabled us to resume limited production. The experience again reminded us about what cooperatives are all about.

“We secured supplemental cooling space overnight at Atlas Cold Storage in Green Bay 15 miles away. That night, we moved perishable products from the De Pere plant to the Atlas depot, including half gallons of milk that had been filled earlier in the day. To handle the daily flow of products coming to the warehouse, we subsequently transferred our cooler employees there. Luckily, we already had a 10-year working relationship with Atlas. Some of their other clients even tried to accommodate our emergency storage needs. And a neighboring business agreed to provide parking space for our trailers.”

With that Atlas location and assistance from Foremost’s Golden Guernsey Dairy plant at Waukesha, the cooperative continued serving customers while the new cooler was being built at De Pere. “Before the crash, we delivered 400 products,” Heil noted. “But afterwards we cut down to 150 and diverted a small portion of our production and distribution to Waukesha. Gradually, some of those diverted products were returned to the line at De Pere.

Minimal disruptions
“Any service disruptions to our food service, school and retail customers were very minimal and temporary. And none of our member-owners experienced any delays in our milk pickup schedule,” Heil stressed, although some milk route trucks were temporarily diverted to Waukesha. He developed a week-by-week schedule for returning aspects of the operation back to full production.

Temporarily, packaged milk products —particularly half pints of milk for the school lunch program—were secured from competitors and neighboring dairy cooperatives, including Swiss Valley Farms and Land O’Lakes, until arrangements could be coordinated within the Foremost system to handle the job. More than 1,000 schools provide Foremost Farms products for breakfast, lunch and snack breaks.


Joe Weis, vice president of the fluid division, directed the return of initial operations at De Pere—first in sour cream and then bottled milk. “All milk that had been in the system at the time of the crash had to be discarded. Milk production equipment had to be washed and disinfected twice before it was returned to service. Then, our own lab technicians tested it. Once we were assured of ample milk supplies, we needed approvals by inspectors. Soon, milk was flowing into our plastic Morning Glory jugs again.”

The explosion caused a leak in the anhydrous ammonia storage lines used in the cooling operation. Fire crews had to work around hot spots and plant maintenance crews immediately shut down the system. The blast blew a sizeable hole in the roof and buckled the foam-paneled walls. The ensuing fire continued throughout the night.

High winds that weekend delayed structural demolition and cleanup at the cooler site. Engineering firms and equipment manufacturers inspected all steel work, racking and material- handling equipment to see what could be salvaged and what had to be destroyed. The site was initially cleared so reconstruction could begin.

Structural steel and roof joists ordered the day after the crash were installed about May 1. Exterior foam wall panels that completely enclosed the new building were in place by mid-May. Luckily, the original contractors still had copies of the DePere cooler plant specifications in their files. That accommodated speedy assembly of needed supplies for the new plant. “Also, the cooler was originally built and designed the way we wanted it, so no new changes were necessary when we had it rebuilt,” said Heil.

Damage to the 1.5-year-old building and contents was covered by insurance.

Emotional impact
“This accident was a very traumatic emotional experience for all our employees, but particularly those working in the cooler building,” Heil explained. “Our employee assistance program counseling service helped ease employees (in individual and group sessions) through their difficult experience. After about two weeks the local service was discontinued, although employees still could access it.”

While health insurance and worker’s compensation handled many expenses and wages of the seriously burned employees, their fellow employees organized a benefit and raised $17,500 for the families. In addition, Foremost has established a trust for the burn victims to which vendors, friends and others are contributing.
An informational brunch attended by about 180 employees, Teamsters union officials and management representatives from Baraboo and De Pere was conducted at Green Bay on the Sunday after the plane crash. In addition to expressions of appreciation, the group was given an update on the plant’s status.

After the accident, Decker represented Foremost at a crisis intervention debriefing conducted for emergency personnel who were involved in the De Pere crisis. The battalion chief at Ashwaubenon, who conducted the session, praised the employees at the Morning Glory Dairy for their cooperation in the emergency. Fortunately, none of the emergency personnel working at the scene were injured. “The success of our fast turnaround,” Heil said, “was directly related to support from our employees, area fire and rescue units, insurance representatives, county and state police, Red Cross and state government agencies—agriculture, commerce and natural resources—and federal agencies.

“We have received calls of support and contributions from many individuals and organizations from all over. A local grocer provided food for our employees the day after the crash.” As to what he might tell other cooperatives caught in such an emergency, Heil said, “The accident taught us that you periodically need to practice your emergency response plan because these unfortunate and unpredictable things can happen.” The subsequent events of Sept. 11 proved how timely and even prophetic his words were.

Family atmosphere
Heil said Foremost tries to foster a family atmosphere among employees at all its facilities. “Throughout our system, but particularly at De Pere, we were reminded that we had a dedicated base of employees who invested themselves in the cooperative. They feel close to one another. That was especially evident in the phone calls and personal visits to the burn victims. Cards were received from other employees working in every division of the cooperative.

“When that plane crashed, it hurt us all, but it also made us pull together.” He and others from the cooperative’s management team visited the burn victims while they were hospitalized at St. Mary’s Hospital Burn Center in Milwaukee.

“Even those who have been with us for only a year or two feel part of the cooperative’s family,” Heil said. “Every year we have an employee Christmas party for them and their families. A lot of our retirees also attend. And periodically we conduct an open house so families and friends can get acquainted with the operation. So, in view of all that had happened, it seemed appropriate to conduct a special open house for our employees and their families shortly after the rebuilt plant was opened.”



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