You may or may not be aware that Page One in Slayton is where we print the Rock County Star Herald and Luverne Announcer.
We send our pages online to the Slayton printing plant, and a driver delivers our papers to the post office for mail distribution and to our office for news stand distribution.
Last week a fire broke out in the warehouse area of Page One, where many of the advertising inserts (Sunshine, Bomgaars and Runnings) were destroyed before they could be inserted into the Announcer.
Four employees of Page One suffered from smoke inhalation and received medical attention, and one of those was airlifted to the Twin Cities for additional treatment. Thankfully all have recovered and are doing fine.
The pandemic has made it a hectic 18 months in our business and many others with labor shortages, employee illnesses and quarantining, and loss of revenue.
Page One can add to this list a shutdown due to fire.
All of this has been exhausting, to say the least, but the thing that is driving me over the edge is the constant fighting about what is the right or wrong way to fight the pandemic.
There seems to be no common ground anymore in this country. We have this “either you’re with us or you’re against us” mentality.
Friends, families, neighbors, co-workers and others have picked sides and are going to disagree until the bitter end.
I think about how bad things could have been if the fire at Page One would have raged out of control.
Workers would have been displaced probably for a very long time. We would have experienced a shutdown in production and loss of revenue. But worst of all, there could have possibly been loss of life.
For a brief few days we scrambled to make arrangements for printing while the staff at Page One worked to get the printing plant back in operation.
During this time there was no right or wrong, there was no “you’re with us or you’re against us.” We just all worked together to put the pieces back together.
“Stronger together” works a lot better than “weaker apart.”