Roderick Arms returns to production after April 29 severe storm damages operation

Hardest hit local industry still making vital repairs to function
Three months after the April 29 storm blasted through Monett, production is returning to normal at Roderick Arms and Tool. The company’s approximately 70-year-old concrete block building took a direct hit from the storm on the northeast corner of the Highways 37 and 60 intersection. The entire south edge of the plant roof was lifted by the storm.
“We’re not quite at 75 percent,” said Steve Sperandio, company vice president and general manager. However, the company’s 12 employees, all impacted in some way, are able to make parts again for customers across the nation.
Sperandio noted the building, built in sections, has gradually returned to service piece by piece. The east end of the facility still needs roof work. Crews have finished replacing the main roof. The air conditioning system is running again. Installing new heaters will come prior to winter, but was not the highest priority in this season. Sperandio said 10 weeks of intermittent rain following the storm, some five days a week, dumped 800 gallons of water a day into the building, which filled like a concrete swimming pool.
The storm not only impacted the roof, but also blew out the skylights. Concrete walls suddenly let in sunshine through a myriad of cracks between the blocks, requiring crews to grind out bigger spaces before applying new filler. One spot of light is still visible through a crack on the west wall, a visible reminder waiting to be addressed.
“About 30 percent of the roof was gone,” Sperandio said. “It was hard to find the original corrugated steel decking under the flat roof. We had to match that. Our skylights were antiques. Some of them were 10-by-10 feet. Our contractor found someone in the Southeast to custom-make new ones for us. We thought about blocking them off, but they give a lot of light.”
Despite the damage, the old building proved solid enough to repair. Sperandio said if the adjacent former EFCO plant on Dairy Street had taken a similar hit, with its large room configuration, the result would likely have been “a very different outcome.”
Repairs on Roderick’s older structure, he noted, must bring the structure up to current building code standards. That took time for the engineers to assess and upgrade the building. On the recommendation of Roderick’s insurance company, pieces of equipment were quickly shrink-wrapped with plastic to keep out the water. Computer numerical control (CNC) machines run on liquid and coolant, surviving the dousing from rain. A bigger problem, Sperandio said, was cleaning up the gravel and tar that washed down from the roof through the skylights, covering much of the equipment. Not all of those machines have been brought back into service.
Roderick’s insurance assessor flew in from Atlanta, Ga., the day after the storm. Sperandio was pleased to see contractors hired, though he wondered about some of the strategies a large insurance company used, such as hiring crews from Kansas City and paying travel time instead of hiring locally. Out-of-town crews, he noted, also showed a different work ethic than locals.
Production at the plant stopped for 10 weeks.
“We tried the best we can, paying wages to our people without income,” Sperandio said. “We’re still a small company. We did little jobs where possible. We had excuses for our customers – ‘We got hit by a tornado.’ Some were understanding, especially local businesses. Some of the bigger ones from major cities weren’t so nice about it.”
Sperandio hesitated about replacing the flagpole on the west side of the building that bent like an old man trying to straighten himself after a long day on the job. It offered a picturesque reminder, but in the end, he relented to return a sense of normalcy.
Walking around the plant, Sperandio looked with satisfaction at many nooks and crannies that underwent repairs and cleaning. He expressed concern that no sirens sounded that morning as the storm descended on Monett quickly. “There’s not a lot of windows here to see what’s coming,” he noted.
Sperandio observed his view of standing around outdoors looking at weather moving in has changed. “I won’t ever look at storms again the same way,” he added.