Spencer Day at Progressive Westman went on social media after last Friday’s fire that destroyed the company’s location on Park Avenue East. He started the post by saying “please just pre-excuse me for any brevity or grammatical errors here. My brain has been absolutely consumed since Friday!
What a wild ride the last 48+ hours have been…. I’m not even really sure where to start! So let’s go back to the beginning. But let me start with the most important piece first; everyone is safe, everyone is doing amazing, and absolutely no one was hurt.
I was woken up to an emergency call at 3:37am Friday morning, saying that the place so many of us call home (Progressive) was on fire. Obviously, my heart hit the floor, and I quickly jumped into my truck to head over with a million questions and concerns going through my head. I will probably never forget that drive.
When I arrived on site, all of our amazing civic emergency response teams were already on site and hard at work with the monumental task of getting the fire under control and put out as safely as possible.
I watched from the sidelines for a couple of hours while assisting some of the BFES team in navigating SDS information to ensure everyone was safe heading in and out of the building. I couldn’t help but break down watching the fire fighting family taking care of one another. Getting geared up or down, checking tanks, and the list goes on. It was the first of many heart bursting moments in the coming days.
By 6:00am, I knew it was time to notify our entire team that the coming days and weeks were going to look vastly different. I spent the day sending as many updates as I could to our team as information unfolded. (Since then, I have had many, many people ask me if we know how the fire started, and we still do not have any information, but should know more in the coming days as this process unfolds.)
By 8:30am, we had mobilized our office & management team at my house, and with the heroics of Oeloff at Technology Solve, we were online (with 8 computers and 2 printers) by 9:00am taking action to get space secured, inventory ordered, and prioritizing a million things to ensure we could continue to fulfill our commitments to our customers. We spent the entire day fielding calls and stick handing everything that came our way. I cannot thank everybody enough for coming together SO quickly to do whatever was needed to start our road to recovery.
And honestly, the rest of the day after that is a little bit of a blur. It was just filled with so many phone calls with staff, customers, vendors, insurance broker, adjustor, BFES, family, friends…… if I have missed calling/emailing/texting any of you back, I am sorry! And I will get to it I promise!
We were able to secure a temporary space by Friday afternoon, and have spent the entire weekend here cleaning, prepping, organizing, prioritizing (lots and lots of sticky notes on walls, it’s almost like a strategic planning session on steroids) and looking to the weeks and months ahead. (Side note: as I sit here and draft this in our new office/warehouse space, I’m hearing tunes pounding, people printing delivery slips for missed stops on Friday and the week ahead, people out in the warehouse making plans to accept the many, many orders that are going to be received starting as early as tomorrow morning, and vehicles coming in and out of the parking lot doing drop offs and getting organized for tomorrow. Truly just amazing, all of this.)
We have to send a MASSIVE thank you to Nirmal at Shreem for allowing us to utilize his space at 386 Park Avenue East for the next month while we continue our hunt for a suitable space while we await the rehab efforts at 372 Park Avenue East. (And thank you Ty Worthington for making the quick connection on this!)
THE UNFORTUNATE
At this point, all indications are pointing to a total loss of everything at 372 Park Avenue East.
THE GOOD
Our delivery fleet (including the Floor & Carpet Care van) is (almost) completely intact. We only lost one unit to the fire. We had spare keys for all our units, and were able to safely get them offsite yesterday, cleaned up, and over to the new home and ready to roll for tomorrow!
THE GREAT
Our PEOPLE, our DATA, our INFORMATION, were (and will remain) unaffected. And OPTIMISM, DRIVE and EXCITEMENT have never been higher. Believe it or not, we have actually had an incredibly fun past couple of days, filled with laughs (and a few tears, but HAPPY tears as we discuss the support this community has shown).
I alone (not even including our staff, families) have received literally HUNDREDS and HUNDREDS of calls, texts, emails with unlimited offers of temporary space, food, furniture, and assistance with anything at all. My hair has been absolutely blown back by the support shown from this community. We will never, ever be able to fully express our gratitude to all of you. Our hearts have truly never been fuller, and we cannot thank you all enough for your patience and support while we get settled into this new chapter in our story, and the next one after that.
Our drivers WILL be on the road tomorrow, and ALL of our staff will all be operating under our new “normal” out of 386 Park Avenue East. We have partnered with some local couriers and laundry service facilities just down the highway to keep all of our regular services on the go until we are able to have our equipment replaced. We have been incredibly busy and proactive in reordering all stock that was lost to the fire. Please be patient with us as we navigate some of those logistics in returning your inventories to full levels.
Customer & industry specific action plans will be emailed out individually to customers. If you have ANY questions at all, or for some reason have been missed in any email correspondence please reach out to me at any time day or night, or anyone on our team, at all the same contact info.
What started as a nightmare 48+ hours ago, has quickly turned into one of the most emotionally fulfilling journeys of my life, watching the way our family at Progressive and the entire community has rallied together in support of continuing our dreams.”
Day ended by saying “I absolutely love you all, in every sense of the word. From the bottom of my heart and soul, and from my head to my toes, THANK YOU!”
