Bill Ford describes his workers' heroic acts in Turkey, and what's next

In early February, on the other side of the world, a major earthquake collapsed buildings that crushed thousands of people in Turkey and Syria. A trained search and rescue team made up of Ford Motor Co. workers raced to disaster sites to aid victims — and now the automaker is playing a key role in recovery.

"There’s nothing more important to me than us helping where we can," Bill Ford, executive chair of the company, told the Detroit Free Press during a recent interview. "At the end of the day, when I think about how many years I’ve been at Ford, I guess my whole lifetime, it’s always about the extraordinary people I’ve met. It’s not about any particular vehicle or any particular plant or any particular piece of machinery or office building."

Ford, both the company and the great-grandson of the company's founder, are familiar with crisis rescues in Turkey. This wasn't the first time. But with each disaster comes a strengthening of the partnership between two families that began a century ago, when a Turkish businessman named Vehbi Koc stood outside the office of Henry Ford and gave him a letter urging the industrialist to make the man who spoke no English a Ford representative overseas, Bill Ford said.

"And that's exactly what happened," Bill Ford said. "In 1928, he became a Ford dealer in Ankara. And the Koc family and my family have been friends and business partners ever since."

It would mark the beginning of a collaboration that extended far beyond cars to include disaster relief.

'Refused to give up'

Ford Otosan is a joint venture between Ford and its local partner Koc Holding, the largest industrial conglomerate in Turkey that dates its start to 1926 and is controlled by one of Turkey's wealthiest families. The automotive partnership employs about 20,000 employees; 14,000 in Turkey and 6,000 or so in Romania. Ford has a large manufacturing operation in Turkey that includes two assembly plants and other facilities that build different versions of the Transit van for all of Europe, Ford confirmed Thursday.

"One of the most heartwarming stories for us was the experience of an employee who knew where his family lived but in the rubble it was a mess. People would go through and mark buildings with no life and nothing left. He refused to believe that," Dave Johnston, deputy general manager of Ford Otosan, told the Free Press recently from Istanbul about the hours and days after the February quakes. "After four or five days, his sister and his brother and mother were pulled out, helped by our Ford Otosan search and rescue team."

Sadly, the employee's father did not survive the devastation in Hatay, Johnston said.

In telling these stories, Johnston disclosed that he had no idea that the company had a search and rescue team, created after a 1999 quake.

"These are (25) ordinary people who become extraordinary. They get thrown into a situation and they become heroes," said Johnston, who joined Ford in 1995 and has worked in Istanbul for nearly four years.

Members of the volunteer search and rescue team have enrolled in earthquake training on their own time, just as Americans learn CPR and other lifesaving preparations. Earthquakes are an unfortunate reality in Turkey and residents know every bit of training can and will save lives, Ford Motor said.

One Ford dealer in Turkey lost 11 employees, basically while they were sleeping, Johnston said. "They got buried under the rubble. Another dealer lost two employees. Ford lost a total of 13 employees. I met with one service personnel who had lost 41 members of his family and was back at work. We weren't asking people to come back. For him, it was some level of getting back to normality."

A magnitude-7.8 earthquake before sunrise killed thousands in Turkey and Syria on Feb. 6, immediately followed by another strong quake and then 10,000 aftershocks over three weeks, Reuters reported. Thousands died. The United Nations estimated more than a million people were left homeless, Reuters said.

One Ford dealer initially housed 700 people overnight after the earthquakes because the dealership building in Kahramanmaras was deemed a safe structure, he said.

"They had people sleeping everywhere," Johnston said. Another 200 people parked cars outside the dealership to use the bathroom facilities and have access to water because their homes had been destroyed.

"Even two weeks later, there were still 100 people sleeping at the dealership," Johnston said. "These dealers are seen as kind of pillars of the community. People have rushed to them to keep warm and keep safe.

"You see so much pain and suffering in these faces," he said.

Memo within 24 hours

An email titled "earthquake update" landed in the mailbox of Ford CEO Jim Farley on Feb. 7 at 21:26 hours that framed the situation.

"Another very difficult day for the team, as we were made of aware of the first deaths of relatives of our employees," Johnston wrote. "One employee’s brother has been confirmed dead. Another team member has lost an aunt, her aunt’s husband and their daughter-in-law."

The memo included these direct words and phrases:

• The reported death toll now stands in excess of 6,300 — more than 4,500 in Turkey and more than 1,800 in Syria. Internet communications have been severely interrupted today in the region. Challenging weather conditions for rescuers also persist.

• Having received new information from our employees, 136 employees now have relatives unaccounted for, which is a big increase versus our prior information. Our search and rescue team in Hatay is prioritizing employees’ families.

• In addition to Antakya and Adiyaman dealers, our Malatya Ford Trucks dealership has today reported serious damage.

• Second FO (Ford Otosan) search and rescue team, health team (2 doctors and 3 nurses) and a Ford Otosan ambulance (with paramedics) is on their way to the region, arriving tonight.

Unrelated to the humanitarian aid effort, Ford Otosan employs doctors and nurses in its Kocaeli, Eskisehir and Sancaktepe facilities, the automaker confirmed to the Free Press.

'Delivered three babies'

On March 22, Farley hosted a global town hall that typically engages about 30,000 employees.

"I want to start by acknowledging the absolute tragic events in Turkey and Syria. The devastation and loss of life and destruction in Turkey is actually almost unspeakable," Farley said that day in remarks provided to the Free Press by Ford upon request.

"Our dealers, I’ve talked to many of them. They turned their dealerships into shelters," he said. "We had a nurse from our medical team who delivered three babies in the impact zone. They all helped without being asked. It's what makes our company different."

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Bringing in 'homes' for survivors

Ford and Koc are working to deliver 5,000 shipping containers to sites of need identified by the government that can each house up to eight people displaced by the earthquake, he said. They're about 22 feet by 10 feet with different living areas. These kinds of container homes are not uncommon in disaster zones.

"What we're trying to do is create some container cities where people can live and develop a sense of community," Johnston said. "Their houses are completely ruined or structurally unsafe."

The Ford Motor Company Fund, a multimillion dollar charitable arm of the automaker, is providing financial support for this recovery. In addition, the Ford Family Fund, established in 2018 as a collective family philanthropy initiative, is directly involved in Turkey and includes monies from Bill Ford personally.

After the earthquake in 1999, Ford made a $2 million contribution and built buildings and other projects, Johnston said. "We're trying to work through a similar investment concept. We're also looking at pre-fabrication houses. The relationship is so deep between Koc and Ford."

Koc Holding, an investment holding company, is involved in automotive, energy, consumer durables and finance, according to its website. The entity told the Free Press in a statement that the company continues to play a part in "healing the wounds" of Turkey's Feb. 6 disaster. The Ford partner said it has allocated a total of 2 billion Turkish Liras (approximately $104 million US) to the project to help cover the cost of container housing in areas identified by the government and to provide hot food, laundry and cleaning needs in the region.

How 1999 influences today

"Let me take you back," Bill Ford said. "There was a terrible earthquake that hit Turkey, just like this one. Although in ’99 it happened to hit our facilities, as well. I was just in my first couple months as chairman of Ford."

A Ford Otosan point man named Mark Schulz immediately organized small groups of first responders, Ford said.

"Our people arrived before the Red Crescent," Ford said.

The aid agency known as the Red Cross in many countries is known as the Red Crescent in Muslim nations.

Ford Otosan workers went "out into the neighborhoods and started recovering bodies, yes, but also uncovering people still alive," Ford said. "He and his team I don’t think went to bed for a week. I’m not kidding. They saved so many lives. Then he turned our plant into a temporary morgue. ... He called me, I was brand new at the time in my job. He said, 'Can you help?' I said, 'What do you need?' And he said, 'Everything.' I called everybody I knew in the Detroit area that could potentially help us. We got tents, phones, because they had no way to communicate with each other, medical supplies. We flew over a doctor and a nurse as soon as we could. We got cargo space on a Northwest airline. Of course, nothing was flying into Turkey then. So we landed in Greece and then we had a caravan."

Schulz set up tent cities, Ford said.

"Even to this day, they call that area Fordtown or Fordville or something," Ford said. "Mark was given the highest honor that a foreigner can get by the Turkish government for all he did."

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Ford continued, "Values sit above ... and that really is who we are and what we stand for. That has to be believed and known by everybody in the organization. When you see it come to light, like it did during COVID, for example. Our team didn’t wait to ask permission to jump into action, they just did. Starting to make all kinds of COVID relief material in our plants. It was funny, (former Ford CEO) Jim Hackett called me up and he said, 'This is either great news or we should be concerned.' I said, 'What?' He said, 'Our team didn’t even ask us, they sprung into action.' I said, 'That is perfect. That’s exactly what we want.'"

But that experience made Bill Ford realize that the Ford Fund needed to "get calibrated" to responding immediately to disasters, which it does after flooding and tornados in the U.S. and crises abroad. And the other was launching a volunteer corps to be prepared to mobilize in times of disaster, such as the 2011 tsunami in Asia.

"In many ways, the earthquake in ’99 and the kind of heroism that Mark Schulz showed kind of became the launching point for our whole disaster relief capabilities that we have today," Ford said.

Why care about Turkey?

Bill Ford bristled at the idea that he or the company has bigger financial priorities than disasters outside the U.S.

"First of all, I think, any company, if it’s not making people’s lives better, probably shouldn’t exist. I’ve always felt that," he said. "I also feel that it’s really important that companies have values. That’s very different than a company’s culture, and I separate the two. The culture is what you need to run the business; be lean, be quick. All those things you hear management talking about."

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'It means everything to me'

"Look, my family name is on every vehicle we sell. That means a lot to me. In fact, it means everything to me. Nothing is more important to me than Ford’s reputation," Bill Ford said.

"But this goes way beyond the cars and trucks that we make. It’s how we behave in the communities that we operate. It’s how we treat each other. It’s how we treat the families of our employees. So, there’s nothing actually more important to me than the values of our company," Ford said. "I’ve thought about this a lot. Values should be timeless. How each generation expresses those values could be very different. But the values themselves shouldn’t change. I believe those values are something that I very much try to keep alive and in front of everybody at Ford."

He was in Turkey just before the earthquake and he plans to return soon, he said. While he closely monitors the progress of this latest relief effort, Ford said he doesn't want to be intrusive. He's fine reading emails and updates sent to others in the company.

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While some people may wonder why a U.S.-based company is playing such a key role in the earthquake recovery, Bill Ford says it should be obvious. When thousands of lives have been lost in an instant, a global company cannot just focus on factory production, he said.

"The values of a company are the most important thing that a company can have. Many companies don’t seem to have them. Then it’s just a paycheck," Ford said.

When Ford goes to Turkey, he often takes his grown children (his grandchildren are too young; "They can recognize the Ford oval and they think that's fun and that's about it.") so the next generation of Ford and Koc leaders understand each other and the "values" that have contributed to the long partnership.

Message to Ford children

"I want them to understand that Ford is much more than just a place to work or a corporation. It really is about affecting people’s lives around the world," Ford said. "My daughter Ellie, when she was very young, I took her to Mexico because we’ve opened over 200 schools in rural Mexico where the government simply couldn’t afford to, and Ford built the schools and then we get a local dealer to adopt the school."

He added, "I wanted her to see what our values in action would look like. It wasn’t just dinner conversation. It wasn’t just me telling them. ... We talk about the values of the company and you can’t just say them, you have to live them. And this is what living them looks like."

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Contact Phoebe Wall Howard: 313-618-1034 or phoward@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @phoebesaid

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Bill Ford describes his workers' heroic acts during, after quake