{"id":26040,"date":"2019-04-05T08:45:45","date_gmt":"2019-04-05T13:45:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/?p=26040"},"modified":"2019-04-05T08:45:45","modified_gmt":"2019-04-05T13:45:45","slug":"postal-employees-rescued-from-flooded-town","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/2019\/04\/05\/postal-employees-rescued-from-flooded-town\/","title":{"rendered":"Postal employees rescued from flooded town"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"post-thumbnail link-fullfeature\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"attachment-twentyfourteen-full-width wp-post-image alignnone\" src=\"https:\/\/link.usps.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/neRescue_large-story.jpg\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/link.usps.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/neRescue_large-story.jpg 900w, https:\/\/link.usps.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/neRescue_large-story-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/link.usps.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/neRescue_large-story-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/link.usps.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/neRescue_large-story-120x80.jpg 120w\" alt=\"Postal Service employees stand with the pilot, who rescued them, in front of his plane.\" width=\"609\" height=\"406\" \/><\/p>\n<h6 class=\"link-caption\"><em>Fremont, NE, Post Office employees gather with pilot Doug Keeler near the plane he used to rescue them following the recent flood. From left are Pamela Eckstein, a retail associate; Luke Beran, a city carrier assistant; Rocky Ognissanti, a letter carrier; Lori Yuan, a carrier technician; Kim Ognissanti, a letter carrier; and Keeler.<\/em><\/h6>\n<\/div>\n<p>USPS News Link &#8211; 4\/4\/19 &#8211; Employees at the Fremont, NE, Post Office arrived at work on a Friday morning last month expecting business as usual.<\/p>\n<p>The town of about 26,000 residents had recently been slammed by a major snowfall, followed by rising temperatures that caused widespread thawing. Still, no one expected disaster was imminent.<\/p>\n<p>Then the levee that protected Fremont from the Elkhorn River failed. One by one, the roads surrounding the town began closing, stranding eight postal workers.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOnce every option to get them out failed and no hotels were available, no shelters had room, I knew I needed to start working on a plan to accommodate them at the Post Office,\u201d said Wes Gronemyer, a Post Office Operations manager for Central Plains District.<\/p>\n<p>He instructed the employees to settle into the Post Office, where they contacted friends and family and prepared for a long, uncertain night.<\/p>\n<p>Terry Schmidt, a Central Plains District information systems manager and an amateur pilot, heard about the stranded employees and contacted Doug Keeler \u2014 a fellow pilot who owned a six-seat, twin-engine Cessna 340 airplane \u2014 to see if he could help.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen I heard there were people stranded, wanting to get home to their families, I was happy to do it,\u201d Keeler said.<\/p>\n<p>The next morning, Keeler made two 80-mile trips to collect the employees and drop them off at an Omaha airport so they could return home.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m super grateful and amazed at the level of concern and rapid response USPS showed,\u201d said Letter Carrier Lori Yuan, one of the stranded employees.<\/p>\n<p>Western Area Vice President Gregory Graves later met with Keeler to thank him. \u201cWhen I heard what you did, it made me proud to be an American. You are truly a hero,\u201d Graves said.<\/p>\n<p>Keeler was happy to help USPS.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI like your organization. \u2026 I was glad to be there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fremont, NE, Post Office employees gather with pilot Doug Keeler near the plane he used to rescue them following the recent flood. From left are Pamela Eckstein, a retail associate; Luke Beran, a city carrier assistant; Rocky Ognissanti, a letter carrier; Lori Yuan, a carrier technician; Kim Ognissanti, a letter carrier; and Keeler. USPS News [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26041,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking","last_archivepost"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26040"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26040\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26042,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26040\/revisions\/26042"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}