HOUSTON — A U.S. Postal Service facility in North Houston is slowly getting back to normal operations -- but not before it ships millions of pieces of mail to other major cities in Texas, only to be redistributed back down to Houston.
The roof at the USPS Processing and Distribution Center on Aldine Bender Road was damaged during Tropical Storm Imelda, injuring three workers and damaging 68 machines that process letter mail, according to Diann Scurlark, Vice President of the American Postal Workers’ Union.
She said that area where the machines are was deemed unsafe, and workers have not been able to access the mail in that area. She said they have been assigned to other tasks at the P&D center in the meantime.
RELATED: Union: No timeline yet for mail delivery after Imelda damages North Houston processing center
Scurlark said the Houston facility is the largest in Texas, and the only one in its district.
She said it processes more than one million pieces of mail each day. She said mail that comes to the facility is being sent to cities like Dallas and Austin that also have P&D centers, and then sent back to Houston.
”There was absolutely no other way other than ship that mail out. Other than process that mail manually, and this is a facility that processes over a million pieces of mail a day," said Scurlark.
Scurlark said the 68 machines work 24 hours a day, and that trying to process the same amount of mail by hand would cause severe delays -- longer than it takes to drive the mail to other facilities.
Woman's wedding invitations affected by USPS building collapse
The family of a bride-to-be in Houston sent out the 120 invitations to the wedding just after Labor Day weekend through their local post office branch.
Those invitations never made it to the intended recipients.
“They’ve been planning this wedding in earnest since January,” said Larry Estes, the bride-to-be’s father. “Our daughter is very artistic. She designed everything, including the invitations and responses.”
They say branch staff told them that the invitations likely ended up at that facility.
“It is very stressful. There’s a lot of emotions tied to seeing your invitations on the refrigerators and the desks of the people you love,” Estes said.
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