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Tyrone ServiceMaster helps in IowaFri, 07/18/2008 - 3:13pm
By: Ben Nelms
Helping those in need. That is the business and the mission that ServiceMaster holds dear and is the reason Tyrone franchise owner Jorge Valdes and three local managers traveled to Iowa in June to help with efforts combatting the damage caused by record floods. The Tyrone group are part of a national ServiceMaster catastrophe team network designed specifically to provide quick response to natural and manmade disasters, especially in the mitigation efforts of large buildings such as shopping centers and those found on university campuses. Their efforts in Cedar Rapids and Iowa City ran from June 25-29. Unashamedly Christian, Valdes said the Tyrone group prayed before they left for Iowa. Valdes and the other Tyrone managers supervised more than 100 temporary workers during their time in Iowa, supervising the clean-ups and coordinating those efforts from a mobile command center. “Overall, Iowa was one of the worst disasters I’ve seen. It was worse than the California wildfires,” Valdes said, noting that in some ways the situation on the ground was worse than Hurricane Katrina. “There was oil and other contaminants in the water. One of the buildings we were dealing with had 9-10 feet of water in the basements. We would pump the water out and the next day it was back again. We ran the pumps 24-hours a day for nine days.” It was clear from the continuous news accounts that the flooding along the Mississippi and its tributaries was unprecedented in modern midwestern history. Yet for all the destruction across such a wide area of the plains states, Valdes saw something else, something precious. “Mid-westerners are great people. They lost their belongings and they still had a smile on their faces and they were thankful that people came to help them. Unlike Katrina, the people in Iowa didn’t blame the government and they didn’t have an entitled attitude,” Valdes observed, adding that while in New Orleans after Katrina some in the community actually fired weapons at him and others that had come to help with the clean-up. “The people in Iowa lift up your spirit. You just say ‘Praise, God.’” Valdes and ServiceMaster are no strangers to disaster mitigation. Some of Valdes’ other clean-up efforts include mitigation activities at the Pentagon after 9/11, the California wildfires in late 2007 and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. ServiceMaster is a Christian company that wants to prosper and wants to help others, Valdes said, adding that such help also comes in times of human need. “We’ve created a niche in the industry in terms of disaster mitigation for large catastrophes or for large structures,” he said. “We can come in and overpower the commercial loss.” For Valdes and those involved with ServiceMaster, the ability to respond to those in need is a privilege, not an obligation. Inside that response is a view of something beyond a wrecked visual landscape, beyond the destruction wrought by man or by nature. It is something, even in times of tragedy, that is intrinsic to the human spirit, something that transcends the horror of the tragedy. “It’s interesting to see the human make-up, the goodness of people, the goodness of America,” said Valdes. “We rally behind each other as a whole.” login to post comments
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