Quick Thinking Saved Thousands of Dollars in School Food

When Susan Maffe woke up to reports that Hurricane Irene was likely going to hit Connecticut last Thursday, the Meriden Public School administrator had one thing on her mind: food.

About $50,000 worth of food, in fact, which was stored in the refrigerators and freezers of the 12 schools in the district, ready for the first week of school. A prolonged power outage would surely spoil everything.

So Maffe, Food Services Manager for the district, scrambled and called the Davidson Company of Meriden, a trucking company her husband works for that lies right over the city line on Research Parkway in Wallingford.

They didn't have any refrigerator or freezer trucks, but connected her with their contacts at Ryder Trucks, from which she was able to rent what she believes was the last freezer trailer in three states. It cost about $100 a day, Maffe said.

"I was really looking for three in case we lost everything," Maffe said, but all other calls throughout the day yielded no results.

In the end, the approximately 50-foot trailer was big enough to hold the contents of the freezers of Roger Sherman, Israel Putnam, Casimir Pulaski, John Barry, and Thomas Hooker, which each lost power during the storms Sunday. Maintenance staff at the schools moved the items following the brunt of the storm Sunday afternoon when they discovered the five schools had no electricity.

That amounted to at least $25,000, Maffe said Tuesday. They still lost everything in the refrigerators, about $3,000 worth of items, she estimated. Though cafeteria managers had moved as much as possible into school freezers before the storm, they couldn't fit everything inside.

Items were delivered back to the schools Tuesday night for the district's first day of school Wednesday.

Superintendent Mark Benigni credited Maffe and Assistant Superintendent Michael Grove for their quick action and Maffe, in turn, thanked the district's maintenance staff.

"We lost very little – the maintenance staff was really outstanding – we were fortunate," Maffe said.