Reliance responds to Windsor and area residents hit by high winds and hard rain
A message from Roger Rossi, President and CEO, Reliance Home Comfort
On Sunday, June 6, Windsor and Essex County residents were hit by high winds and a massive down pouring of rain, flooding basements and causing sewer backups. A tornado, generating estimated winds up to 220 km/h also ripped through some parts of the area, uprooting massive trees and causing extensive damage to area homes, greenhouses and businesses. Early estimates suggest that the damage from this downpour and tornado could reach up to $75 million or more.
Many of our employees and customers were impacted. For those employees who lived through the state of emergency and are still cleaning up the mess, I want to offer our support and encouragement.
I also want to recognize a number of employees who responded to the call for help, supporting Reliance customers, friends and neighbours in the Windsor and surrounding areas. While the storm damage wrecked havoc in these communities, Reliance leadership teams in Windsor quickly took action, reaching out to their colleagues in Workforce Planning and mobilizing an expanded team of installers and service technicians from Hamilton, London, Tri Cities, Sarnia and Windsor to assist our neighbours and friends in these communities.
The response was quick, timely and required a number of people to spend time away from their own family and friends, to work long hours in flooded basements, helping to restore some degree of comfort to these homes.
I want to take this opportunity to recognize the entire Windsor team including supervisors Omar Arabi, Scott Donaldson, Kip Wieringa and the Windsor technicians and installers, who did a fantastic job mobilizing our response to this crisis. Complementing their efforts were Windsor acting managers Roy McKinley and Rick Mould, based in London. Our Workforce Planning team, led by Amanda Andersen, helped coordinate our response and Darrell Randell of WFP was on-site in Windsor to locally direct all activities. Paul Rea, Tri City Supervisor, who was involved in Reliance’s response to the Hamilton flood last year, also provided his assistance. Working together with our Windsor team, service and install crews from Hamilton, Sarnia, London, Brantford, Cambridge and the GTA also answered the call, ensuring that Reliance did its best to serve these customers when they needed us most.
This Reliance response team handled over 840 service calls and almost 240 replacements in the ten days that followed this tragic event. On June 8 alone, 130 replacement and 271 service calls were completed by these community ambassadors.
We want all involved to know that as your colleagues, we recognize your achievement and celebrate this success. As part of the team responding to this area’s tragedy, you have demonstrated that you are a fine example of a Reliance ambassador, treating others as they wish to be treated and showing support for the communities we serve.
Your actions reinforce my pride in this organization and the people who work here. Congratulations on a job well done. You make me proud to be part of Reliance.
Sincerely,
Roger Rossi
President and CEO