Construction Therapy

 A network of local construction companies went beyond the normal duties of their trades recently in helping one local company deal with tragedy.

After a gunman sprayed a local factory with gunfire, the employer wanted all reminders of the real-life nightmare removed so that employees would not get trapped in memories of the tragedy. Management asked the building owner for help.

The owner, Semple Avenue Corp., called on Randy Green and R.A. Green Construction Co. to put together a team to repair the damage. The shootings occurred on a Thursday and "that night I contacted everyone, who I thought might be needed, to give them a heads up," Green said.

Wellington Environmental was first in on Friday morning to clean up. Hallways and doors were riddled with bullet holes, Green said. There were bullet holes through factory equipment and through the exterior walls of metal buildings. In some cases, a single bullet passed through five interior partition walls.

"There was extensive damage," Green said. "And the people I worked with from the company had either witnessed the attack or knew the people who were killed. Their emotions were running high and they pretty much just wanted us to make everything go away; they wanted us to make it look like nothing had every happened," he said.

Green took estimators from H&G Sales and Manhattan Glass to the workplace on Friday to count and measure for everything they would need so they could start gathering parts and materials that day.

"Everything had to be done in short order," said Steve Marsh of H&G Sales. The owner wanted everything done within five days. H&G measured hinge and lock locations for every damaged door and worked over the weekend prepping replacement doors to match existing ones.

"Some of the glass was specialty glass," said Todd Trebing, president of Manhattan Glass. "That took some head scratching. We had to think outside the box to come up with another kind of glass that we had in stock that could do the job," he said. Manhattan Glass also installed the glass. "The size of the glass was an issue, too. It was very big. If you damage it, what would we have to use? We had good guys, though, and they handled it very carefully," Trebing said. By Wednesday, Manhattan Glass had the new glass installed.

Painters, carpenters, and laborers began working on Saturday, Green said. "So many walls were damaged, you couldn't tear them down and replace them. You had to patch and repaint and depend on the artistry of the painter to make it so you couldn't tell it was a patch," he said.

"Our job was to find bullet holes and get rid of them," said Rick Berck, vice president of All American Painting, "you can't have an employee walking in and seeing something like that."

All American Painting had five guys working nonstop, Berck said, "and periodically people like me would come in and find more bullet holes. We took care of items that might not have been bullet holes, but looked like one. It was a very, very touchy and sad situation," he said.

All of Green's contractors were helpful to factory employees when they came in to collect their belongings and sensitive to the trauma they had experienced. "I'm very proud of all of them," Green said.

"It was a very sad deal, but I'm glad that they could rely on us," he said.

"There was no time for contracts. Everything was done on a gentleman's agreement," Green said. "Everyone came in on my recommendation and it all worked out. They did a fantastic job of pulling it together and doing the work quickly," he said.

Other companies involved in the work were: Accurate Fire Protection, Ahrens Contracting (demolition and clean up), C&N (demolition), Carpentry Specialists, Crown Electric, and Orf Drywall.

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