Higher ground

April 30, 2014 was a rainy day in Modena, Pa., a small community in Chester County. The crew at Organic Mechanics Soil Co. was gearing up for the company’s busiest season, the last few days before Mother’s Day. Organic Mechanics makes organic, peat-free potting soils, soil amendments and fertilizers, which are sold in independent garden centers and natural food stores.

Company president Mark Highland looked out his window to survey the rainfall when he noticed the Brandywine River had crested its banks.

He made a mental note that he’d never seen the river that high before.

“We’d gotten about 6 inches of rain that day,” Highland recalls. “But we’d had a much larger rain event in a 24-hour period before.”

He went back to work expecting to receive a weather alert if anything was imminent. But that alert never came in the form of a text or alarm. Instead, 45 minutes after looking out his window at the swollen river, his foreman ran in telling everyone to move their cars.

“The river is now on our access road, which runs along the warehouse. It rose 1 foot in 15 minutes,” he says. “Then the owner of the business next door came in and said he was getting his wife and daughter and evacuating. We stopped production immediately.”

Highland and his crew got their cars to the top of the hill, which is the highest point of the property. And 15 minutes later, the river continues to rise.

“At that point, I was only concerned for the safety of our employees,” he says.

In one hour, the Brandywine River had risen 3 feet. The warehouse had between 16 and 18 inches of water, and that structure is raised by 24 inches, he explains. The outdoor storage area was under 2-3 feet of water. The company lost everything in the holding yard, as well as all of the raw materials in the warehouse. And every pallet that was completed and stacked had to be restacked with what the team could salvage.
 

The aftermath

The river returned to its regular level by the next morning, and the Organic Mechanics team was slogging through mud for days.

“We removed everything from the warehouse and blasted it with bleach and then rinsed it with water,” he says. “I give our guys 100 percent credit for the cleanup and return to business – they did it with a smile.”

The flood delayed orders for 2-3 weeks.

“Looking back I wish I’d taken 15 seconds to center myself and run through priorities, including the disaster training I’d received while working at Longwood Gardens,” he says. “I could have sandbagged around the entrances to our facilities – we have the perfect type of product to do that. I could have created a moat to help hold back the water. Both of those tasks would have only taken a few minutes with our equipment.”

The nine-year-old company didn’t have any flood insurance. And the dollar amount of the flood damage precluded the area for federal aid.

“The last flood at this location at the height we experienced was in 1972. But now I have flood insurance and it’s worth every penny,” he says.

Organic Mechanics was fortunate to have grown last year, but had cash-flow issues by the end of 2014 because of the flood, the cleanup and the production down time.

“We finished the season as strong as we could, but we had to make some tough choices because of the cash-flow problem, which included cutting our donation program,” he explains.

Organic Mechanics founded the Mogreena Garden Project in 2010, which supports the Chester County Food Bank.

Highland and his team came up with a plan to try and keep the philanthropic portion of their business intact.

“After weighing the pros and cons of crowdfunding, we decided to try to raise $40,000 through Indiegogo and keep the Mogreena Garden Project, which was also damaged in the flood.”

The money raised through Indiegogo was earmarked to offset expenses associated with the flood.

Funds would help keep the doors open and lights on at Organic Mechanics and help the Mogreena Garden Project feed more people through the Chester County Food Bank in 2015.

The company didn’t want to solely accept donations. It wanted to reward donors. Different donation levels garnered certain perks and rewards to participants.

After a nearly two-month fundraising campaign, the company raised almost $10,000, falling short of its goal. But the donors will receive the promised perks, and Organic Mechanics will continue production.

Highland is projecting growth again this year, so his charitable and humanitarian plans will resume eventually.

For more: www.organicmechanicsoil.com