Surviving the Storm
It was a wind storm to remember on Friday, Nov 4th causing 19,000 homes and businesses in East Jefferson County to lose power, many for 48 hours or longer. The PUD had its work cut out for them with trees and lines down everywhere. It was not only the strength of the winds (gusts 60-70 mph in the straights), but the unusual direction from where it came, the NW, that caught our rain-sodden trees off guard. Our little Corner Store was closed and without power all weekend.
As we write this Monday, exhausted from scuttling food to and fro, we are assessing our losses and trying to put Humpty Dumpty together again. At the current time, we have power and have reopened, but there’s still no internet. Here’s the newsletter from owner, Katy, with our story and a request to our community to help us recover some of our losses. It’s pretty simple – COME IN AND SHOP! Treat yourself and buy a little extra. Our staff and local vendors thank you from the bottom of our hearts.
Dearest Community,
What a storm! Can you believe our "Welcome to Chimacum" sign got ripped from its armature and flew all the way to Chimacum Cannabis Co? The traumatized plywood cows report they've never seen anything like it. That's Sam (our back-of-house manager) assessing the damage the following morning.
We sincerely hope that all of you got through the storm and power outage safely without too much damage to your property. We know that many of you are still without power, and there's plenty of work ahead to recover.
All in all, we were without power for two straight days! And while the store had to be closed that whole time, many of our staff bundled up and and spent the weekend shuttling food back and forth to keep everything at the proper temperature.
Even then, fresh local food has a shelf life, so we packed all our handmade sandwiches and plenty of desserts into an ice chest and delivered it to the Jefferson County PUD. Needed to keep them fueled and on task! Everything else perishable in the store got carried outside to our freezer and refrigerated containers, powered by our backup generator.
We would have been set, but then the backup generator stopped working! In desperation, we contacted every electrically-minded person in Jefferson County. At one point, when a Double-D Electrical van drove by, Jenna got in her car and chased it down. Huge thanks to everyone's help and Double-D for eventually fixing the problem.
(That pole that is snapped in half on Rhody Drive carries the transmission line to 2 substations!)
At times like this, we especially appreciate our staff, community, and of course, all the county's hardworking PUD workers. It's heartening to see everyone pitch in and support each other. It felt good to share some of our backup freezer space with SpringRain Farm to store their chickens.
Now, we're hoping you can help us. We lost an entire weekend of sales, which is a significant hit to our bottom line profit, especially during the lean months. Perishable items were given away, our staff lost wages, and all the Corner Kitchen prepped items got culled when they couldn't be made into finished products. It will take time for our Corner Kitchen to get back into full production mode.
It would mean so much to us, our employees, and our local food vendors if you stopped by in the next few days and spent a little extra on groceries and treats. Heck, preorder a turkey and holiday pies while you're at it! The timing is perfect to buy extra with our new impressive price drops on hundreds of grocery items (more about this excellent development in our next newsletter!)
Thanks as always for being the magnificent community that you are. Together, we continue to ride all the crazy bumps in the road.
Sincerely,
Katy McCoy, co-owner
On that note…
