Iowa distributor stays afloat after floods

By Industrial Distribution staff -- Industrial Distribution, 7/14/2008 7:58:00 AM

On Wednesday, June 11, Craig Stephan drove to the same office he’d been working out of for more than 29 years. He didn’t realize it would be the last time he’d see the headquarters and sole location of Iowa Midland Supply as it had been for 41 years.

The Cedar Rapids-based cutting tools distributorship was buried under nearly 10 feet of water after the Cedar River, which bisects the city, flooded the area in mid-June, destroying 4,000 homes and 900 businesses. Iowa Midland Supply is located just three blocks from the river, but far enough that it had never suffered more than minor flood damage since setting up shop on Cedar Rapids’ Third Street in 1967. Even during the 1993 flood—the worst in recent history prior to this June—the building took on just a few feet of water.

“They said to expect ’93 levels, and that didn’t affect us much so we weren’t that worried,” says Stephan, Iowa Midland’s president and co-owner, with his brother, Brian, executive vice president. “But by mid- to late morning, they said, ‘It looks like it’s coming,’ so we started raising things up. By mid-afternoon, [the water] was at the building and we were still sandbagging and raising [things]. But by 7 p.m. [the water] started coming into the building.”

The Stephans and their six employees had enough time to save the company’s computer system and a few personal items, but everything else would be lost.

Stephan and his brother went back the next day to check on the building and try to save some more items, but it was no use. A railroad bridge had collapsed, creating a dam that sealed the building’s fate.

“We ended up with nine feet, seven inches of water,” says Stephan. “We got in about three or four days later and found everything we owned in a big pile of mud in the middle of the building.”
The company’s inventory was completely destroyed, along with old photographs and other memorabilia from the firm’s 55-year history.

In the meantime, Stephan and his colleagues had set up shop in a temporary location just north of downtown and continued serving customers.

“We made the best of it,” Stephan says. “We got our information out, and we were receiving and shipping orders even while the flood was going on.

Family and friends helped the Stephans clean out the building in the weeks following the flood.
“We’d been in our building 41 years, and the water had never come within three blocks of us,” Stephan says, adding that this year, the floodwaters surged seven blocks beyond his building, all the way to Tenth Street. “We’ve owned the building for many years. You look at the building and where you once had equity, now you have debt.”

Like many in Cedar Rapids, Stephans’ company was not covered by flood insurance and will recoup only a small portion of its losses from other insurance coverage. Still, Stephan and his colleagues are maintaining a positive outlook.

“We hope to get back into part of [the building] in the next month or two,” he said in mid July. “This was a forced change nobody wants to deal with. But we are making the best of it and our customers are standing behind us. We somehow figured out how to keep the shipments flowing.”

Click here for our previous coverage on the Midwest flooding.