When heavy rainfall hit northwest Iowa in late June, many homes and businesses flooded in the region. Sincere Surroundings, a provider of home decor and personalized gifts based in Rock Rapids, Iowa, was one of the many businesses that flooded in late June.
Sincere Surroundings Owner Michelle Leuthold says over a foot of water covered the company’s entire building, covering equipment and lower inventory with muddy water.
“Our city has never experienced something of this magnitude in its history,” she says. “Businesses and homes were lost, and the damage is completely mind-blowing.”
For the past three weeks, Sincere Surroundings’ team members as well as volunteers have been working to clean up the wholesaler’s building. Leuthold says three technicians have also been on-site helping to recover as much of the wholesaler’s equipment as possible.
“The cleaning process has been a huge undertaking,” Leuthold notes. “We’ve had hundreds of volunteers and thousands of hours that went into cleanup and recovery. Everything was removed from the building, washed off. Damaged product was disposed of.”
Leuthold adds that she’s been especially grateful for progress made in cleanup efforts and for volunteer support these past few weeks.
“People came from as far as eight hours away to help with our cleanup and recovery,” she says. “It’s humbling to receive this much help.”
As of mid-July, Sincere Surroundings had all the necessary equipment up and running to restart production and begin shipping orders again. Leuthold notes that the company isn’t able to start producing at normal capacity levels yet, but she is hopeful that capacity will increase steadily every day.
“We have embraced the motto, ‘That which does not kill you makes you stronger,’” she says. “We aim to be strong when we get through this. We have been working relentlessly to recover quickly. Although we have a long way to go to fully recover, we are very happy to be shipping orders again. We have tried to overcommunicate our progress to our customers and reps. Most have been incredibly understanding to the extended shipping times that orders are experiencing. We have added a night shift in the more critical departments. We are hoping that by the beginning of Q4 our ship times will be back to normal.”
