N.Y. Financial Institutions Keep Moving Thanks To Post-9/11 Backup Plans

"Because of 9-11, we have procedures to know where everyone is almost immediately and that's a good thing," said Brian G. Belski, fundamental market strategist at US Bancorp Piper Jaffray, a Minneapolis-based investment bank. Piper Jaffray's New York offices relied on backup power after the northeastern blackout began Thursday afternoon and was "100 percent operational," Belski said.

In addition to backup generators, another kind of contingency plan kicked on minutes after the blackout started. Several brokerages and banks began calling employees with recorded instructions through an automated service run by Dialogic Communications Corp. of Franklin, Tenn.

Dialogic's chairman, Gene Kirby, estimated that his company was handling more than 100,000 calls for financial firms that needed to send mass updates to workers about such details as the status of their auxiliary power supply and when important conference calls were beginning.

While Dialogic has been in business for more than 20 years, its service didn't begin to interest Wall Street firms until they started preparing for so-called Y2K-related disasters and then endured the 2001 terrorist attack on New York.

Some financial firms activated continuity plans offered by consulting companies that can help recover data lost in power outages or provide computers and phones for displaced workers, according to Don DeMarco, a vice president in the IBM Corp. division that sells such services. He said Wall Street's interest in those services has surged since the World Trade Center attack.

"Even before September 11, when you're talking about a Wall Street firm, they had a lot of measures in place," said Matt Migliore, managing editor of Contingency Planning & Management, a trade journal for risk-assessment executives. "I'm sure they've bolstered a lot of their measures since September 11, knowing now that anything can happen."

The blackout hit right after the close of trading on Wall Street, and power was restored to the area around the New York Stock Exchange before Friday's opening bell. Officials said the exchange could have operated even if the outage had continued.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, the NYSE established a $25 million alternative trading floor at an unspecified location in case of physical destruction.

Not only did the the NYSE's emergency generator immediately begin working during the blackout, but the exchange also maintains extra water and fuel oil. And it has redundant, active data centers served by different power grids.

"Clearly there were contingency lessons that were experienced as a result of the great tragedy of September 11th," said NYSE chairman Richard Grasso. "We took from those lessons much knowledge that we've applied."

The diesel generators that immediately switched on at the Nasdaq Stock Market could have run as long as a week, said Bethany Sherman, Nasdaq's senior vice president. The Nasdaq, which also maintains a backup facility in Maryland and a redundant power source from outside the Eastern seaboard, reported no problems following the blackout and opened as usual Friday morning.

"The level of preparedness demonstrated in the last 24 hours has been superior to what we saw two years ago," said Steve Randich, Nasdaq's chief information officer.

The smaller American Stock Exchange delayed trading because problems at a utility substation prevented adequate cooling of trading floor computers. And banks struggled with widespread outages at automated teller machines.

Meanwhile, other kinds of vital businesses said they found success in backup strategies that had been honed in recent years.

Verizon Communications Inc., the main phone carrier in much of the Northeast, ran 500 central switching offices on batteries that were in turn recharged by fuel generators. At least a few of the backup systems, however, had problems keeping up with demand.

Verizon's emergency plan has been in place for decades. Even so, spokesman Eric Rabe added: "The temptation in this day and age is to say, 'Oh, do you have to do that? It's elaborate and expensive.' I think September 11 reconfirmed for us that the way we had the system configured was vital and made sense."