Walked in to a flooded building

Walked into a flooded building this morning with about 5-6” of water everywhere. Kitchen and warehouse. Coincidentally, I started to work on the crisis SOP yesterday. We’re working on cleaning up now and we’re hoping the building owner has flood insurance but what’s the next steps. We’re a small company, I’m the only QA and I have never dealt with something like this before. Any tips? Thanks.

Oh man, that sucks!

Food safety wise:

• Thorough investigation of all materials (Ingredients, finished product, etc.)
  • Probably alongside an inventory sheet so you can check off as you go.
  • Discuss with ownership in advance how to best proceed with discarding/etc (for example, box of spices, will it be an immediate discard? Will it be moved to an area to be investigated furter, etc.)
  • Document with pictures as thoroughly as possible, as this will most likely turn into a large insurance claim OR lawsuit
    • If you have counsel on retainer, discuss with them in advance if discarding product is their suggestion or if labeling , sequestering, etc would be their suggestion
• Investigation of machinery or utensils for fitness and risk of contamination if re-used (can you completely sanitize, is it saturated beyond acceptable levels for re-use, is it just plain broke
  • Sequester, document. Basically everything above except you probably won't be discarding a lot of this stuff (except maybe utensils)

After that, the "how much sanitization will the floors/walls need" comes in, if you are even going to remain in that location.

It goes without saying, you should NOT sell/ship ANYTHING that was in those buildings until several people sign off on it as not being adulterated as per FDA's definitions.

That really sucks, sorry.  A good reminder these terrible scenarios can and will happen.   Good luck!

https://www.fda.gov/...storms#industry

Walked into a flooded building this morning with about 5-6” of water everywhere. Kitchen and warehouse. Coincidentally, I started to work on the crisis SOP yesterday.

We’re working on cleaning up now and we’re hoping the building owner has flood insurance but what’s the next steps. We’re a small company, I’m the only QA and I have never dealt with something like this before. Any tips?

Thanks

This post could have also worked in the Topic: Close Encounters of the Food Safety Kind.

Sounds like a scary story to me.

Quick Update

Been cleaning nonstop since Friday. We lucked out about as much as you can in a flood. We got about 6 inches of rain in a 30 minute period overnight and locally a lot of flooding happened! The road on the way into the facility had mostly washed away and when we arrived in the AM there was about 3 inches of water everywhere. It had been as high as 5 or 6 inches because the pallets were wet just about to the top.  We lucked out and all our ingredients and finished product were just above the water line. We still have to move everything from the warehouse and clean all the sediment that is under the pallets but we need to get some room first. Our kitchen has been cleaned from top to bottom and its ready to go. Electrician is coming in today to test everything to make sure everything is safe and operable. Considering we didn't have flood insurance( the building owner did for his business only) we lucked out. The locked double doors that lead to the outside mostly held up to the water and debris that was dumped there otherwise this would of been a disaster.