Five years ago, in mid-February 2021, a historic winter storm affected much of the United States, including Texas. It was the coldest period for Texas in more than 30 years, and it came with an ice storm that started Feb. 15 and made driving hazardous for the next several days.
At Dallas headquarters, record cold temperatures and power outages caused water lines and pipes to burst, flooding parts of the building. Frozen drain lines thwarted some mechanisms in place to promote the safe evacuation of water.
Several directorate offices suffered water damage, including MD the IT Data Center, Command Center, e-Commerce, ECP contact centers, the mail room, the Facility Management Office, and Braswell theater and Corporate U training rooms.
As flooding poured in to the data center—the heartbeat of the Exchange, allowing the Exchange to serve Warfighters and families worldwide—teams from IT and RE braved icy roads to drive to HQ and sweep the water away from critical electrical equipment.
IT associates feverishly worked to disconnect equipment from power sources and relocate it to dry staging areas. The storm disrupted associates’ ability to work from home, but salvageable equipment was relocated so servers could get up and running again in just a couple of days.
IT associates found any open, dry space they could, then reconnected hundreds of computers by hand. A makeshift rack was set up in the Data Center that included about 550 computers, all of which had to be checked for damage and then reconnected.
Facility Management Office team members installed a portable, 5-ton cooler to cool the additional load generated by the computers.
About 300 more PCs were set up in a room on the first floor. Associates scoured hardware stores across Dallas-Fort Worth—a metro area larger than the state of Connecticut— to find enough power strips and other necessary supplies to run the makeshift setup.
While IT was busy trying to keep things connected, HQ FMO associates and contractors worked to limit water damage and make the building habitable.
Dehumidifiers were installed on the first and second floors, which reduced humidity levels on the second floor from 77% to 50% and lower in the hallways. Massive, temporary ducts were constructed on both floors to keep fresh air circulating.
In May 2021, Director/CEO Tom Shull honored dozens of associates from IT, Real Estate, Merchandising and Human Resources for their around-the-clock heroic work in protecting equipment at headquarters.
The storm also affected Exchanges in Oklahoma, Louisiana and elsewhere in Texas. At Barksdale AFB in Louisiana, the BX faced a water emergency shortly after the storm hit and water mains burst at the installation.
On Feb. 17, Waco Distribution Center associates hurried to load water onto a trailer to support Barksdale, even though the winter storm had forced the DC to close—and several of the DC associates were dealing with power outages and burst pipes at their own homes.
A contractor drove the 220 miles from Waco to Barksdale to deliver 18 pallets of water. The normally 4½-hour drive took 16 hours because of icy roads that still had thick traffic.
Waco DC teams also delivered pallets of water to Fort Hood, where pipes had also burst, leading to more than 1,000 water leaks. Although the installation was hit hard by the storm, the Fort Hood PX didn’t suffer significant damage. All Exchange facilities, except for two Expresses that had to close for a few days, remained open.
The III Corps Express remained open 24 hours—and for three days, it was the only place on the post where Soldiers could get water, food or other necessary items.
The JBSA-Fort Sam Houston main store had some water damage that didn’t affect the sales floor. Mission-essential services remained open, including two Shoppettes and a troop store. A couple of smaller Exchange facilities, at Camp Mabry in Austin and Ellington AFB near Houston, suffered some water damage.
In Oklahoma, Exchanges at Altus AFB, Fort Sill and Tinker AFB dealt with burst pipes. At Tinker, facilities closed temporarily but reopened before the installation had reopened. Shoppette I was the first facility to reopen on Feb. 17, but all facilities had reopened as of Feb. 22.
“Throughout all of it, we had a steady stream of shoppers who were really appreciative that the Exchange was open,” Tinker GM Charles Eaves told the Exchange Post. “All of our team members were glad to be back to work.”
For more photos from the February 2021 winter storm, click here.
SOURCE: Exchange Post archives
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