Ike and TxTACC (our business)

Jerry drove down to the business Saturday afternoon, a slow process with trees uprooted, power lines down, and no traffic signals. What he found was that the roof of our business' building had blown off. As the days passed, we learned that the entire electrical system was damaged beyond repair. The building is a limited access, hard hat demolition zone. The top two floors will be demolished and rebuilt. The first and second floors where our training rooms are located, didn't receive too much damage. The water came in the building through the stair wells and the mechanical/electrical piping and the elevators. We have some carpet damage and some moist walls. Nine of our twelve rooms are ok though. The problem is that the electrical raiser needs to be replaced. This isn't a 'pick one up at Home Depot' kind of thing. These are made to order by Seimens. It will take them six to eight weeks to make the thing. Once it gets to Houston it will be installed, A/C will be hooked up, all fire code requirements will be put in place, and, if we are very, very lucky, by Thanksgiving our two floors might be ready for occupancy. Thanksgiving. Boy, that will give us the first two weeks of December to hold classes. The last two weeks of December and the first two of January are 'dead weeks'. Nobody trains during Christmas time. So our year is gone. Last Thursday they let us in the building to throw away the contents of our refrigerators and freezers. About one thousand dollars of frozen cookie dough, concentrated apple and orange juice, and miscellaneous other catering items went into huge construction garbage bags. Our six employees are without work till December. It's a hard thing.