SULLY, IOWA, US — Key Cooperative, a member-owned cooperative serving more than 1,700 farmers and 10,000 customers in 13 communities across the state of Iowa, is moving forward after a severe “derecho” storm damaged 10 of its 15 grain locations on Aug. 10.

“We’re currently working on a systematic assessment across our entire territory to get an idea of what our yield potential was in those various areas and what amount of damage we have, what standing corn is left, (and) what’s harvestable,” Boyd Brodie, general manager of Key Cooperative, said during an Aug. 21 update.

Describing the damage, Brodie said Key Cooperative operates 15 locations that receive grain in the fall, and 10 of those locations experienced “significant damage.”

“So out of our 30 million licensed storage, we have 40 bins that were damaged, and that represents about 12 million bushels of space, and about 20 of those bins were completely demolished, which represents roughly 6 million bushels of space,” he said. “We’re also in the process, this year, of adding about 3.5 million bushels of space around the company anticipating some significant yields prior to the storm and we’ve also brought in another 3 million bushels of emergency bunker storage that we’re placing strategically around at our locations to help with the harvest.”

Brodie said the cooperative has acted quick in the aftermath of the destruction, performing an assessment and forming a disaster recovery task force. He said the damaged locations have been cleared, and now the cooperative is focused on “repairing, rebuilding and redesigning” certain facilities.

Brodie said Key Cooperative has several bins on order, with some scheduled to arrive as early as Labor Day. He added that the cooperative hopes to have several sites up and running by the first week of October.