It started out as any warm June day in Gillette, Wyoming but took an unexpected twist when four tornados touched down before 2:00 in the afternoon. Tornados one through three wrecked havoc in the Oriva Hills area, damaging nearly 20 homes.
Eventually, a fourth tornado would touch down just outside of Gillette over the west pit of the Blackjewel LLC's Eagle Butte coal mine. It had winds of up to 100 mph and was on the ground for about 8 minutes before losing strength just east of the Dry Fork Station power plant.
Thankfully nobody was injured, but while snapping and bending over multiple power poles, damaging the control room and damaging several vehicles at the Eagle Butte mine it also damaged their large Hastings HVAC Counterflo-350 unit.
While not always the first thing thought of when considering tornado damage, the Hastings HVAC unit manufactured only in 2007, was pivotal for Blackjewel and their operations. After hearing that Blackjewel would need a replacement, Hastings HVAC went hard at work to get pricing determined and the unit pushed through production to get it turned back over to Blackjewel in a timely order and more importantly before the bitter cold would hit.
In September, Hastings HVAC was estatic to get Blackjewel their new unit turned over to be installed and to help get the busy coal mine company back up and running at full capacity. While sad the original unit not make it through the storm, Hastings HVAC was happy to get Blackjewel's requests fulfilled and to help them resume all normal operations before the brutal Wyoming winters would arrive.
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