Seismic Isolators installed in California Winery
he 2014 earthquake on the West Napa Fault caused estimated damage in excess of $300 million with much of that being sustained by the regions 500 winemakers. In the aftermath of that 6.0 magnitude earthquake, HALL Wines knew they needed additional seismic protection to safe guard their inventory of valuable and irreplaceable vintage wines. The patented Pellegrino Base Isolation was an easy decision.Shipping & Inventory Manager, Gary Cisneros
“We reviewed our needs with Joe Gangemi of Material Handling Design & Equipment (mhde), and decided to install the isolators throughout the new facility. From an operational point of view, the isolators are a great solution as they’re almost undetectable fitting neatly under the rack’s upright frames, and don’t interfere with our lift trucks moving in and around the rack.”
Hall’s warehouse stocks cases of bottled wines, and serves as their short and long term storage facility. From this facility, Cisneros’ team packs their direct- to-consumer Wine Club orders on a daily basis, and stocks an inventory of the winemaker’s library wines on the pallet rack, possibly for years.
The warehouse included 500+ pallet positions of RIDG-U-RAK’s tear drop pallet rack with nearly 100 base isolators installed with the upright frames. “We felt the investment in the Base Isolators provided an extra level of protection for our valuable wines, making it an easy decision,” said Cisneros.
RIDG-U-RAK conducted more than 100 earthquake simulations with varying loads, product configurations and base arrangements during five weeks of testing at the Structural Engineering Earthquake Simulation Laboratory located at the State University of New York at Buffalo.
