Oct. 20, 2022
A Thank-You Message from Mid America Paper Recycling
Mid America Paper Recycling would like to give a big thank-you to all of the people who
helped us during a building fire over Labor Day weekend. The
Chicago Fire Department
responded in the middle of the night to help us, along with several employees, including Plant Supervisor, Jaime Garcia, Plant Manger, Alan Surdyk, CEO Don Gaines, and President, Paul Pirkle. We wish to thank many of our recycling partners, contractors and service providers who also responded immediately and throughout the holiday weekend to help us. We will never forget your selfless acts of kindness
We thank the 120+ firefighters and Chicago Fire Chief, as well as the
Chicago Police Department which arrived in no time, thank goodness. And many thanks go to our dear friends from
Lakeshore Recycling (now called LRS), including Alan Handley, John Larsen, and Michelle Moore who dispatched large roll-off containers and a Bobcat that were critical in clearing our facility of the damaged materials.
Dubak Electrical, our electrical contractor, fed power to critical equipment so that we could get back up and running by the start of the following work week. Thanks so much for all of your help.
Two Mid America team members,
Alan Surdyk and
Jaime Garcia, who arrived quickly and immediately helped pull out damaged waste materials, helped clear pathways and coordinated with other arriving plant team members
Gustavo Salgado,
Diego Ramierez,
John Furczon, and
Rogelio Gutiérrez. They all worked hard and never thought of the late hour or long day. The teamwork that was displayed by our team was nothing short of incredible.
We are equally grateful for fire-suppression provider United States Alliance Fire Protection, which quickly came onsite to assess the number of heads that needed to be replaced and did so quickly so as to bring fire suppression service back to our plant. We also appreciate the fantastic work of our over door provider, Door Systems, which restored our dock-door operations so we could operate out of all but one of our docks.
Thank you to ADT Security Systems, which repaired and restored our facility’s security system, and our financial professionals, GCG Financial/Alera Group, our property/casualty/health insurance brokerage firm, which jumped into action, even answering a call in the middle of the night. And ATI Restoration did a fantastic job securing the building with a full mitigation strategy of boarding up windows and doors that were damaged during the fire. Also, thank-you to LawDog Security & Investigations which placed a security guard on our premises until such time that our security system was back online.
We cannot forget to mention our information technology and custom business network provider, Bob Hirtzer, owner of Tier2 Networks, for his response to our team to get our internal computer and phone systems transitioned to employees’ homes while repairs commenced.
Can-do attitude
We are so proud of the MAPR team for taking quick action to get back to business. From communicating, advising, and volunteering to help wherever possible, each person and group listed above responded to our call without hesitation with a can-do attitude. It has been awe-inspiring to witness things quickly fall back into place because of their take-charge frame of mind. They went above and beyond for us, to say the least.
Due to all these companies and individual efforts, we were back up and running by Tuesday after the Labor Day weekend with little drop-off in capabilities. The first responders, our friends, and staff got there in time to assist us in the very early morning of a holiday weekend. We think that is amazing.
In a time of need, our company will remember their selfless acts always.
Sincerely,
Don Gaines, CEO
Paul Pirkle, President
The Surdyk Family
