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CNN Live Today

Talk with Tennessee District Postal Manager

Aired May 07, 2003 - 11:04   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: We are sitting here in Jackson, Tennessee, right next to a facility that has really been hammered hard. This is the main post office here in downtown Jackson, Tennessee, and it looked like it had a building dropped on top, and then maybe a million gallons of water poured on the remains.
Joining us right now is a man who is very closely tied to the operations right now with trying to recover this building. We're talking to Denny Unger, who is the Tennessee district postal manager, is that it? Yes, and, Denny, you right now are basically overseeing the process of going inside this building and recovering the mail, correct?

DENNY UNGER, TENN. DIST. POSTAL MGR.: That's right. We have all the mail out now. We just took the last by the out, and we're moving it over to Northside station to get it dried out and processed.

HARRIS: That is what I found so interesting. When we talked yesterday with Don Cartwright, who is the postmaster, he was saying that you have to go inside there and get every single piece of mail and dry it out and deliver it anyway.

UNGER: That's correct.

HARRIS: How do you do that?

UNGER: We just do it. This isn't the first tornado that's hit the Postal Service, or the first hurricane or the first disaster, but 10 minutes after it hit, we were in the process of getting the mail out, and the main objective was to make sure first everybody was safe, and luckily, none of our people were hurt. They followed our emergency plan real well. No one was hurt at all. And then we started right in on getting the mail out, getting it on trucks, and moving it over to the other side of town, where there is no damage.

HARRIS: I've got to say, it must have been a heck of an experience for the workers who were there that night, working in that building, because we got a chance to look at the one spot, that part of the building that when they were in, that whole part of the building is the part that actually got trashed the most, and yet still, no one actually got a scratch in there.

But tell us how, we saw bulldozers and bobcats in there scraping and dragging things out. How do you know you're not taking mail out there with the trash?

UNGER: Before we started the cleanup, we had several people in there who knew where the mail was, and we made sure we got it into a secure area, which was on the north side of the dock there, and then we started the process, then we sent another crew in to make sure we didn't miss anything. Once we got it out of the way, then we started the cleanup on the side we knew was secure.

HARRIS: We also saw in there a number of Post Offices boxes, and in fact, the Post Office box, which you would think would be very secure, because they look like little safes, they had the entire front walls blown off, the doors were all blown off. What happens to people who have Post Office boxes in there?

HARRIS: Well, right now, we're going to have them pick up their mail at North Station. We retrieved the mail from the back side. And luckily, even though the lobby is totaled, the mail was intact. They'll be able to pick up their mail at the North Side Station, and we have portable boxes coming in today, where we'll be able to set something up.

I just came from an alternative site we're looking at, where we hope we can set up within a couple weeks, where we can move our mail processing operation and our box section over there to keep things moving. We're delivering mail. We started delivering mail yesterday on almost every route. We're going to try it on every route today, as long as the roads are passable.

But all the carriers are there at work, and the other station, and we're going to get it out.

HARRIS: Is that a guarantee that anybody who had any piece of mail in this building, any package in this building, they're going to get it?

UNGER: As far as I can guarantee it, they are, yes. I've been through the building twice. I've had several managers in there right now looking through it. We have found no other mail. To the best of our knowledge, all the mail is out, secured and on its way.

HARRIS: That's phenomenal. Denny Unger, we thank you very much for your time. Good luck. You have a lot of work to do.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com







Aired May 7, 2003 - 11:04   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: We are sitting here in Jackson, Tennessee, right next to a facility that has really been hammered hard. This is the main post office here in downtown Jackson, Tennessee, and it looked like it had a building dropped on top, and then maybe a million gallons of water poured on the remains.
Joining us right now is a man who is very closely tied to the operations right now with trying to recover this building. We're talking to Denny Unger, who is the Tennessee district postal manager, is that it? Yes, and, Denny, you right now are basically overseeing the process of going inside this building and recovering the mail, correct?

DENNY UNGER, TENN. DIST. POSTAL MGR.: That's right. We have all the mail out now. We just took the last by the out, and we're moving it over to Northside station to get it dried out and processed.

HARRIS: That is what I found so interesting. When we talked yesterday with Don Cartwright, who is the postmaster, he was saying that you have to go inside there and get every single piece of mail and dry it out and deliver it anyway.

UNGER: That's correct.

HARRIS: How do you do that?

UNGER: We just do it. This isn't the first tornado that's hit the Postal Service, or the first hurricane or the first disaster, but 10 minutes after it hit, we were in the process of getting the mail out, and the main objective was to make sure first everybody was safe, and luckily, none of our people were hurt. They followed our emergency plan real well. No one was hurt at all. And then we started right in on getting the mail out, getting it on trucks, and moving it over to the other side of town, where there is no damage.

HARRIS: I've got to say, it must have been a heck of an experience for the workers who were there that night, working in that building, because we got a chance to look at the one spot, that part of the building that when they were in, that whole part of the building is the part that actually got trashed the most, and yet still, no one actually got a scratch in there.

But tell us how, we saw bulldozers and bobcats in there scraping and dragging things out. How do you know you're not taking mail out there with the trash?

UNGER: Before we started the cleanup, we had several people in there who knew where the mail was, and we made sure we got it into a secure area, which was on the north side of the dock there, and then we started the process, then we sent another crew in to make sure we didn't miss anything. Once we got it out of the way, then we started the cleanup on the side we knew was secure.

HARRIS: We also saw in there a number of Post Offices boxes, and in fact, the Post Office box, which you would think would be very secure, because they look like little safes, they had the entire front walls blown off, the doors were all blown off. What happens to people who have Post Office boxes in there?

HARRIS: Well, right now, we're going to have them pick up their mail at North Station. We retrieved the mail from the back side. And luckily, even though the lobby is totaled, the mail was intact. They'll be able to pick up their mail at the North Side Station, and we have portable boxes coming in today, where we'll be able to set something up.

I just came from an alternative site we're looking at, where we hope we can set up within a couple weeks, where we can move our mail processing operation and our box section over there to keep things moving. We're delivering mail. We started delivering mail yesterday on almost every route. We're going to try it on every route today, as long as the roads are passable.

But all the carriers are there at work, and the other station, and we're going to get it out.

HARRIS: Is that a guarantee that anybody who had any piece of mail in this building, any package in this building, they're going to get it?

UNGER: As far as I can guarantee it, they are, yes. I've been through the building twice. I've had several managers in there right now looking through it. We have found no other mail. To the best of our knowledge, all the mail is out, secured and on its way.

HARRIS: That's phenomenal. Denny Unger, we thank you very much for your time. Good luck. You have a lot of work to do.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com