[SOLVED] Lynn James was in the vortex of

Lynn James was in the vortex of a set of crises. Lynn, an entrepreneur and the president, CEO, and 75% owner of Wind River Energy Inc., was one week away from closing a deal to secure much-needed financing for existing and new operations via an independent public offering (IPO) on NASDAQ under the sponsorship of prominent stock- brokers in New York and Toronto. All Lynn had worked for was in danger of going up in smoke, and there was grave risk to the lives of innocent workers and citizens. What on earth could and should Lynn do?
Over the last nine years, Lynn had been very successful. Initially, Lynn had been intrigued by the possibility of developing small, freestanding energy installations that fed their power into regional electrical grids or provided power to small, isolated towns. It had been possible to acquire and refurbish several small hydroelectric generating stations that had been mothballed
by large northeastern energy producers or the small cities that still owned them. Due to the rise in the cost of fossil and nuclear fuels, these waterfall plants made a rate of return on invested capital of roughly 22%. Over the years, Lynn and various associates had bought and refurbished five plants, sold two, and continued to operate three in Ontario and Vermont. Based on successful operations in the East, Lynn had arranged for the incorporation of Wind River Energy Inc., into which energy holdings were transferred to pro- vide collateral for bank loans and vendor mortgage financing.
During the last six years, Lynn became interested in the generation of energy using windmills. After visiting “wind farms” in California and off the shore of Denmark, Lynn realized that the wind conditions were exceptionally favorable just east of portions of the Rocky Mountains. He began to investigate providing energy needs to small, isolated towns in that area. Four years ago, a ten-windmill installation was developed outside of Freeman, Alberta, which initially contributed to the town’s energy needs. The town owned an old hydroelectric plant on the local river and had a backup oil gener- ator system for emergencies. Two years ago, Wind River acquired the town’s energy generation systems and became the sole source of energy for Freeman. Four years ago, Free- man was a town of 2,000 homes that was using all the energy it could produce, so it welcomed the windmill installation. Since that time, 750 more homes were built to house the workers at two new mines in the area, and the town’s hospital was enlarged. Further investment was now needed to pro- vide additional generating capacity.
Based on favorable operations in Free- man, Wind River Energy had developed a reputation for reliability. The company took pride in keeping its commitments—a fact that attracted the attention of the mayor and leaders of West Fork, a neighboring town to Freeman. They approached Wind River, and Lynn signed a contract to pro- vide energy to West Fork on the same basis as for Freeman. Part of the anticipated financing was to provide funds for the purchase of West Fork’s electrical generating capacity.
Disaster struck during the last week. On Monday, the Wind River manager in Free- man, Ben Trent, called Lynn in Toronto to say that something had gotten stuck in one of the water input pipes to the hydrostation, and he wanted to know what to do. Summer was just starting, and air-conditioning needs would go beyond Wind River’s capacity. Wind River’s chief engineer was away on holiday, but Lynn checked with his assistant, who suggested that if the input door could be closed, someone could enter the clean-out pipe that intersected the input pipe. When this was relayed to Ben, he said that he did not think that the input door had ever been shut and might not work, nor had the clean-out pipe been used during the forty years the plant had been in service. He would check on them and call back. On Tuesday, Lynn received a notification from the Province of Ontario stipulating that Wind River’s Ontario hydrostation would have to be shut down no later than Thursday. The court order stated that the stagnant water at the edges of the pond where the water intake pipe was located was likely to allow the breeding of mosquitoes that would spread the West Nile virus. The stagnant water situation would have to be remedied before the plant could restart, and Wind River would be liable to any persons from the local community who were diag- nosed with West Nile virus from Tuesday to five days after the stagnant water problem was remedied. When Lynn went to consult the chief engineer’s assistant (the only other real engineer on staff), he found that the man had just gone home sick with a SARS-like attack of the flu. Unfortunately, the chief engineer was in the middle of a backpacking trip in the Rockies and would be unreachable unless he activated the satellite phone that Lynn had insisted he take.
Ben called back on Wednesday to say that they had finally closed the input door and had just sent a small, thin man into the clean-out pipe to crawl up the intake pipe and clear the obstruction. Because the fellow was so keen, Ben told him to crawl all the way up to the intake door and try to grease the hinges on the inside.
On Thursday morning, Ben called to say that the fellow had done a great job of clearing the input pipe and had examined the hinges on the inside of the input door. He had just gone back in to try to remove the hinge pins, replace the bushings around the pins, and grease the bushings and pins. The mayor was pleased because the fellow was his brother-in-law, who had never really done anything else very well.
At about noon on Thursday, Lynn’s lawyer called to remind him of the meeting on the following Tuesday during which Lynn, the CFO, and the chief engineer would have to sign off documents attesting to the excellent status of the company so that the IPO could go ahead. Any delay would jeopardize the financing deal. Lynn did not know what to say. He just thanked his lawyer and hung up.
In the early afternoon, Ben called to say that the fellow had gotten out of the pipe all right but had jammed one of the hinge pins when reinserting it and did not think the input door would open to allow water into the generating equipment. Someone bigger and stronger would have to go into the pipe to fix the hinge. Ben did not know what to do. He was not a real engineer, having been promoted to be manager on the basis of long service and personal connections with the city council, and he wanted Wind River’s chief engineer to take responsibility and tell him what to do.
In addition, Ben said that the trans- former station regulating the power from the company’s windmills had been hit about a month ago by lightning and was operating only partially on an intermittent basis. The mayor of Freeman was getting calls about the intermittent “brownouts” of electricity and was putting pressure on Ben. Ben was really fed up. He also had a call from the mayor of West Fork, but he had not returned it yet.
Question
1. What would you do if you were Lynn?

Question: Lynn James was in the vortex of