KEC Hurricane Irene

An unexpected visitor, Tropical Storm Irene, made its way through the project site this past weekend.  The storm dropped a lot of rain and heavy wind, brought down many trees, and knocked out power to half of Connecticut as well as much more damage from North Carolina to Vermont.  The site weathered the storm amazingly well due to careful preparation.  Materials were secured and stored.

stormwater detention was modified to accommodate additional capacity

existing structures were braced and reinforced

The timber frame erection was rescheduled to start after the storm so as to not take any chances.  The storm hit between Saturday night and Sunday.  The site did not lose power.  Amazingly the large slab on grade pour scheduled for Monday morning was unaffected.

A few trees and limbs came down around the site but that was the extent of the damage.

  Many subcontractor offices were closed for several days due to power outages which has slowed some of the paperwork traffic and even some of the fabrication process.  For example, the steel shop in Hartford lost power and was not able to finish fabricating our steel as planned.  The timber frame installers are from Vermont and their home town was cut off by flooded rivers and washed out roads so they could not make it back to the site until late on Tuesday.  However, the overall impact was minimized due to good team preparedness.