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Although Hurricane Katrina delivered a severe blow to south Mississippi, our Laurel distribution transformer manufacturing facility was not damaged and was able to begin limited manufacturing operations last Tuesday, increasing output each day as more and more of our employees were able to return to work. Although many of our employees have their own difficult personal situations to deal with, most have already returned to work to help us resume manufacturing operations.
Most of the utility companies in the hardest hit areas of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama were severely damaged. Many of them must completely rebuild their distribution systems. As you can imagine, these utilities desperately need construction materials, including the distribution transformers and voltage regulators we manufacture at our Laurel facility. Most of the emergency need is for overhead transformers.
As we always do in situations like this, we are concentrating our efforts to help the most severely damaged utility companies first. We worked throughout the past weekend including Labor Day in order to maximize production, and we will continue to work long hours until the crisis has passed.
As we make these production changes and reschedule work orders to focus on the most critical emergency requirements, it is inevitable that some non-emergency shipments will be delayed. Utility companies located outside the hurricane damaged areas should plan on shipping delays of approximately two-to-three weeks for their routine orders. Any emergency orders should be brought to the attention of your local Howard Industries Sales Representative. We know this will place a burden on some of our customers, so we will be working very hard to return to normal lead-times as soon as possible.
Let me add that we sincerely appreciate the kind thoughts of sympathy received from many of our customers and vendors, and we are most grateful for their cooperative spirit.
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