Oklahoma City GM Plant Tornado Damage

May 13, 2003

Oklahoma City - May 9, 2003. Damage to the General Motors plant from the May 8, 2003 tornado is seen in this aerial photo. Copyright 2003, The Oklahoma Publishing Company. Permission Granted to Local2209.org for repost

General Motors Corp. is committed to rebuilding its assembly plant in Oklahoma City as quickly as possible even though the plant has suffered major damage from a tornado.

Dan Flores, a GM spokesman, said Monday that it will take the better part of week and perhaps longer to finish a complete survey of the plant, which was hit by tornado last week.

"There is significant damage to the plant, but we are committed to resume production as soon as possible and getting people back to work," Flores said.

Approximately 2,400 of the 2,800 employees assigned to the plant have been laid off indefinitely, pending the resumption of production at the 4 million-square-foot plant, Flores said.

Unionized employees are eligible for supplemental unemployment benefits, which replace about 90 percent of workers' weekly pretax wages.

The plant suffered what GM officials described as substantial damage from the devastating tornado, which also leveled the building belonging to United Auto Workers Local 1999. The union hall is about a half-mile from the GM plant, UAW representatives said.

The giant assembly plant's paint shop suffered substantial damage, as did the plant's body shop and final assembly area, Flores said. In addition, the plant, which looks as if it had been hit by a missile or bomb, also suffered some rain damage after a tornado toppled a long piece of an exterior wall and part of the roof.

More than 1,000 GM employees were in the plant when the tornado hit, but none of them was injured.

The new paint shop, which was completed in 2002, appeared to have suffered the most damage, observers said. In addition, the plant's powerhouse also was heavily damaged and knocked out of commission, GM officials said.

GM has concluded that several hundred vehicles, including many that were on the assembly line inside the plant when the tornado hit, will now have to scrapped, Flores said.

Some power has been brought in to the site but not enough to operate the plant or check on the extent of the damage, Flores said.

Flores, however, said GM had not given any thought to abandoning the site or moving the production of the seven-passenger Chevrolet Trailblazer EXT and GMC Envoy EXT out of Oklahoma City to another GM plant.

Analysts have suggested for some time that GM needs to get rid of some of its excess capacity but Flores said GM is planning on rebuilding.

"We need the plant," he said. "Our focus is getting the plant back in operation. We are not saying right now when the facility will be up and running.

"But the loss will be covered by insurance. We've also got business interruption insurance to cover the down time."

GM has about 50,000 of the seven-passenger SUVs in transit or on dealers lots and can shift some seven-passenger SUV production to another assembly plant in Moraine, Ohio, which is now building a five-passenger version of the Trailblazer and Envoy.

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