It seems like yesterday
It was 30 years ago, Dec. 4, on a bitterly cold night, that the unthinkable happened. I worked at Louisiana-Pacific in Mellen, and that afternoon shift began like any other.
I had roughly five blocks to walk to work. A mere jaunt, unless it happens to be 20 below zero, with a 30 below wind chill.
My particular job was in the drying department, located in the center of the mill. Pieces of thin wooden veneer would be fed into a huge industrial wood dryer. A grader would mark the pieces according to product quality, ranging from premium to filler.
The veneer was cut into various widths, from 6-18”x8’ long for par piece and sheets 4’x8’ long for whole piece. Each size would be sent down a conveyor belt to be piled, by grade, on long flatbed carts on wheels.
My co-workers and I were chatting, and waving to friends coming in for the midnight shift, while we worked. Suddenly, there was a huge boom. I thought something had exploded, it was so deafening.
Instantly, there was a cloud of dust raining down everywhere, coating everything in a thick layer, simultaneously choking anyone in the immediate vicinity. I remember looking around at all the bewildered expressions mirroring my own puzzled confusion. The ironic thing is, no one stopped working. It never occurred to anyone to leave their work station.
Then, the night foreman ran in from the hall, wildly waving his arms, as he roared, “GET OUT OF THERE! NOW!” His look of terrified urgency was enough to spur everyone into immediate action.
I grabbed the hand of my friend, Charlie (Charlotte), who was a grader on my dryer, and headed to the green end of the mill. I looked up and saw the three Polencheck boys running toward us to lead us to safety.
Billy Polencheck worked in the green end and was a good friend; Danny Polencheck was the drying department lead man and Billy’s brother; and Steve Polencheck worked on my dryer, alternating between feeder and piler, was Danny’s son.
We collectively ran to the area that separates the green end department from the drying department. We were discussing what course of action we should pursue, when another huge boom sounded.
At this point, complete pandemonium broke out. It seemed like everything was happening in slow motion. People were running everywhere and screaming. Billy grabbed my hand and we started running toward the nearest exit. We got separated, as I stopped to help a friend up off the floor.
Workers were in such a frenzy to flee, they were knocking people over in their haste. In that moment, the roof over the drying department had come crashing down. The force of the impact was so great, it knocked several co-workers off their feet and a few leaving through the emergency exit were literally blown out the door.
The emergency door was at the side of the building where there was no sidewalk, so everyone had to claw their way up the hill, through waist-deep snow, to the parking lot. The majority of us didn’t have coats, because we couldn’t safely reach them. Several employees just wore t-shirts or shortsleeved shirts, especially those who worked in the drying department.
When I got to the top of the hill, a friend offered the use of a sleeping bag she kept in her car for her dogs to sleep on. Billy wrapped it around us, then walked me home. In the meantime, my mom had heard the first boom and went tearing up the stairs to look out the upstairs hall window. Dad was asleep in bed and thought the house was on fire, from the noise Mom made sprinting up the steps.
As Mom got to the window, she heard an explosion and saw a fireball shoot across the plant roof. She and Dad were still arguing over who was going to come check on me, to make sure I was safe, when Billy and I arrived at the house.
Billy immediately called his wife to let her know he was OK and that my Dad would give him a ride home, after he had a chance to warm up with a cup of hot chocolate.
The remainder of the night consisted of phone calls to, and from, friends, checking in to make sure everyone made it out safely, and talking about the accident and how it could have turned into a tragedy. One of the guys, from the second dryer, had been up on the roof shoveling off snow and chipping off a thick layer of ice.
He had just come inside to take a break and warm up, mere minutes before the roof collapsed. He was extremely fortunate. If he had still been up there, he would have been buried under tons of steel girders and concrete rubble.
Unfortunately, one person was injured as she was standing outside the building and was too close when the cement block wall collapsed, pinning her underneath.
Even though this happened so many years ago, it still seems like it was just yesterday, and I still get emotional thinking back on that night. My heart was touched by all the friends who reached out to me.
Some said they lost track of me in the commotion, while others said the last time they saw me, I was still piling veneer off the belt, right before the roof came crashing down.
Thankfully, this tale had a happy ending.
