HUMBOLDT — For lack of a better term, or until it gets an official moniker, B&W Trailer Hitches employees are calling the plant’s newest addition The Great Hall.
At roughly 3,600 square feet, the multi-purpose facility will have a dining hall and attached kitchen, dedicated space for health care clinics, and training areas large enough to accommodate groups of students and instructors simultaneously.
Just as importantly, the building’s interior will have what’s best described as a safe room, with steel- and concrete-reinforced walls, floors and ceilings, capable of standing up to the most powerful storms Mother Nature has to offer.
“It’s built to withstand about anything you can imagine,” said Dan Willis, B&W’s environmental health and safety manager.
And while the building and safe room have been planned for several years, the importance of having such a facility was hammered home in early December, lest anyone think such a structure is overkill.
A swarm of tornadoes blasted several Midwestern states during the overnight hours of Dec. 9 and 10, killing 70.
Among the victims were employees at a candle plant in Mayfield, Ky., and at an Amazon plant in Edwardsville, Ill., killing a combined 14 workers.
Willis isn’t much for gloating. After all, nobody could safely assume everyone would be unscathed if a similar tornado hit these parts.
“But it sure makes me glad we’re going ahead with this process here,” Willis said.
But hopefully, he adds, such an incident will certainly inspire others to review their safety protocols in case of emergency; to wonder, what if?
UP UNTIL now, B&W’s storm warning protocols involved evacuating the plant on the north edge of Humboldt and seeking shelter in the basement at St. Peter’s Lutheran Church, about three blocks away.
That’s what they did the last time a tornado came close in October 2016.
“The Lutheran Church has always accepted us,” Willis said.
But truth be known, the company’s growth — it has more than 600 full- or part-time employees, with as many as 400 workers in the plant at any one time — makes it much too large to safely get to the church in case of emergency.
For one thing, the company encouraged its workers to carpool to St. Peter’s in the past, but most workers preferred taking their own vehicles.
“We can’t get out of the parking lot without a traffic jam,” Willis noted. “And we simply have too many people to fit into the church.
WITH THAT in mind, the idea for a designated storm shelter on site took root.
Company officials were eager to find a way to make efficient use of the space for whatever shape and size the shelter required.
That’s where B&W’s growth turned into a benefit.
The company recently built a 114,000-square-foot addition on the north side of the plant for additional capacity and equipment.
That equipment, including a number of state-of-the-art welders and automated systems, required intensive training, Willis explained.
And as fate would have it, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the litany of travel restrictions, made it difficult to send employees cross-country for training sessions.
So now, if a new piece of equipment is added, B&W ensures that those who designed the machines bring the trainers to Humboldt.
“We have pretty good buying power with the metal we buy and equipment we need,” Willis said.
It’s not a stretch to note that once complete, the new facility will be able to house as many as a dozen instructors at once. “We’ll have some of the greatest technical minds in the country coming to Humboldt,” Willis said.
The exterior of the building is essentially complete.
Willis said the plan is to have the electric, lighting and climate control systems done in the near future.
He noted instructors have been scheduled for a key training session at B&W in mid-March. “That’s our deadline.”
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