Tennessee Water Heater Plant Operating Again

A water heater plant in Johnson City, Tenn., is up and running after flash flooding got into the building.

According to the Johnson City Press, the plant was only down for three days after the Aug. 5 rainstorms.

A.O. Smith operations director Andy Demski said the 470,000-square-foot plant was flooded from one end to the other. Security officers were at the plant when the weekend storms moved in and they quickly alerted management to the rising water.

Demski said the shipping warehouse was hardest hit, with up to 18 inches of water inside. Assembly lines were also flooded. He credited employees with working hard to get the plant operating again quickly.

Demski said a lot of finished products and motors were damaged by the floodwater.

A flood two years ago caused millions of dollars in damage to another of the company’s plants in Tennessee.

The A.O. Smith plant in Ashland City, west of Nashville, was inundated by massive flooding from the Cumberland River. State and local government put money into the plant’s recovery. Ashland City and Cheatham County bought fields near the plant from the company.

The flooding of May 1-2, 2010, caused millions of dollars in damage from above Nashville through Clarksville.

The company announced about a month after the flood that it would restore the Ashland City plant and continue to employ 1,000 people there.