HEARTLAND Quality Construction and Maintenance Services TM Home Company Services Customers Community Newsroom Contact Presidents' Day Snowstorm (February 16-18th, 2003) In February 2003, no one expected a snow storm that would drop over 30" of snow, throughout much of Heartland's service area, between the 16th and the 18th. While people were digging their cars out, and shoveling their sidewalks, Heartland was receiving numerous calls from Stop & Shop, Rite Aid, and 7-Eleven about the excessive snow on the roofs of their facilities. The problem they were running into, was that town engineers wanted to shut down certain stores, due to excessive flex in the roofing systems. The possibility of closing, stemmed from the multiple roof collapses of other facilities, along the east coast, as a result of the same storm. Heartland quickly mobilized all employees, in teams of 10, and started dispersing them to the facilities, from the highest level of endangerment, to the lowest level. In the course of the next 5 days, with around-the-clock work, we were able to make over 130 facilities, with square footages ranging from 13,000 Sq Ft, to a Super Stop & Shop with over 72,000 Sq Ft. safe for doing business. The services that were performed, ranged from digging trenches that would allow the melting snow run freely to the roof drains, to complete removal of all the snow from rooftops. The most exciting store that we completed, was the Super Stop & Shop in Watchung, NJ, that had so much flex in the roof that the doors to their doughnut cases, could not be opened because of the pressure from the roof. So, along with a roofing contractor, that also works with Stop & Shop, we removed over 144,000 cubic feet of condensed snow by hand, from the roof within 5 days of the storm. The totals for that roof alone came out to be over 2,100 tons of snow removed, and properly disposed of, between Heartland Building and the roofing contractor. Overall, there was not one issue with any of the roofs that we worked on, and not one store had to be closed down.