Quaker Oats Celebrates Flood Recovery

By Dave Franzman, Reporter

Tools

By Becky Ogann

Story Created: Jul 1, 2009 at 10:57 AM CST

Story Updated: Jul 1, 2009 at 4:27 PM CST

CEDAR RAPIDS - Quaker Oats in Cedar Rapids marked the one year anniversary on Wednesday of a Herculean effort to restore production at the world's largest cereal plant.

The event recognized both the hard work the community has shown in recovering from the June 2008 flood as well as the effort shown by hundreds of Quaker Oats employees to repair massive flood damage at the plant.

As part of the event, Mark Schiller, President of Quaker Snacks and Foods, unveiled an artist's illustration of a monument that will mark the event.

The monument itself, which should be finished in several weeks, is a five foot tall stone tablet. It shows a photo of a flooded Quaker Oats plant with the slogan "Cedar Employees Deliver Amazing Resiliency" or CEDAR.

The plant sustained what published reports last summer estimated at $200-million dollars in damage during the flooding. Schiller would not give a final repair figure, but said such estimates were not far off. Quaker resumed limited production at its Cedar Rapids plant in three week's time. Production was back up to 90% within four months

Fifty-one employees were displaced from their homes and received assistance from company donations. Two of those employees participated in the Wednesday ceremony saying in addition to cash donations, the company also allowed flooded out employees to work on their own homes while on full salary.

Employees at Pepsico, the corporate owner of Quaker Oats, raised a total of $250,000 to assist Cedar Rapids Quaker workers who lost homes to flooding.

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