GM plant humming a year after tornado

Sunday, May 9th 2004, 10:34 am

By: News On 6

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) _ Winds exceeding 200 mph ripped the plant's west wall and roof clean off, like a can opener peeling the lid from a giant tin of corn. Steel girders were left standing naked against the navy sky.

General Motors Corp.'s paint and body shops and powerhouse were pulverized, and debris dented about 600 newly assembled SUVs in surrounding parking lots, shattering their windows.

Yet none of the 1,000 employees on duty when the F4 tornado ripped through the southern Oklahoma City plant a year ago Saturday were injured, and GM had full production restored in 53 days, with little impact on earnings and just a small delay to the launch of its GMC Envoy XUV.

``If you had a chance to look at the plant to see the devastation, that was really remarkable,'' GM spokesman Dan Flores said.

Now, silver, gold and maroon Envoys and Pontiac Trailblazers glide through the plant's pristine paint shop and spark-filled body shop at a pace of 3,000 a week, filling about 3 percent of GM's production.

Workers in blue coveralls, hair nets and safety goggles _ many of whom were present when the twister hit _ guide the vehicles along their robotic paths. All is back to normal, like it was before 5:18 p.m. May 8, 2003.

The plant's second shift had about 15 minutes warning. As the sirens wailed, roughly 100 paint shop employees sought shelter in the 500-square-foot, cinder block canteen.

``We knew the instant it hit the building,'' said painter Cherrie Dunbar, who huddled beneath a table, praying. ``You could feel the vibration.''

The power failed, but the generators turned emergency lights on. The room filled with dust, and palpable electricity in the air stood the hairs on the workers' arms.

After the tornado passed, workers emerged to find their twisted cars piled on the parking lot, tossed into the plant or submerged in a pond. One car has never been found.

``It absolutely took my breath away,'' said paint shop area manager Tom Blad, who left work just before the storm hit and immediately returned to survey damage. ``You were here 30 minutes before, and everything was fine.''

The tornado packing winds between 207 mph and 260 mph injured 134 people and destroyed hundreds of homes and business across the Oklahoma City area. At the plant, just two truck drivers for GM suppliers had minor injuries.

The United Auto Workers Local 1999 hall across Air Depot Blvd. from the plant was leveled, too. About 36 members and their spouses were inside for a class about retirement benefits when the sirens sung.

They huddled together in an interior hallway of the steel-sided building, and the twister crushed the meeting hall and the north end of the hallway like a cola can underfoot.

``It sounded like someone had taken a bunch of marbles and dropped them on the building,'' said local president Bob Alexander, who hid out under a table. ``I guess that was the debris.''

The union's new brick hall, which will cost more than $600,000, is scheduled to open June 1. Besides the masonry outside, the hall has a safe room with 12-inch cinder block walls.

``We wanted to go with more of a stable building,'' said the understated Alexander, who was taken to the hospital after the tornado with chest pains and difficulty breathing. Others had ``bumps and bruises,'' he said.

Workers put out of work while the plant was down got about 95 percent of their salaries between company programs and state unemployment benefits, the company and Alexander said. All the plant's roughly 2,800 workers were called back when production resumed June 30.

Working day and night under huge stadium lights, 28 contractors and 500 plant employees repaired and cleaned the mud-filled plant in 53 days. More than 300 tons of structural steel, 18,000 feet of heavy cable and 1 million square feet of siding and roofing were replaced.

``I was impressed at how fast they built it back up,'' said Andrew Geidrocz, 48, a paint shop worker from Harrah, who was at work when the tornado hit. ``I figured it'd be months.''

Geidrocz was out of work for only three weeks, enough time to take his 1993 Lincoln Town Car ``to the junkyard,'' he said.

GM won't say how much repairing the plant cost or how much production was lost, but a corporation lobbyist put the repair tag between $60 million and $100 million. Insurance covered the costs, Flores said.

Shortly after the storm, GM cut its production forecast by 20,000 cars and warned investors it would earn 25 cents to 35 cents less per share in the second quarter, or $1.20. But earnings came in at $1.58 per share, and GM said its warning had been too cautious. The XUV, an Envoy with a retractable roof, launched just shortly after its original scheduled introduction.

GM credits its employees' safety to weekly airings of its emergency sirens and two full tornado and evacuation drills a year. It had a tornado drill just three weeks before the storm last year.

The plant's sirens still sound every Thursday morning at 10 a.m., like clockwork, sending visiting executives from Detroit scrambling for cover. But the shrill scream unnerves the paint shop workers, too.

``I know it's going to go off,'' Dunbar said. ``I'm listening for it, but it still gives me a chill.''