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But, still, Mazzanti, of eMazzanti, rebuffed all offers from help.
"He said 'We're OK. We're working on getting our clients back up.' The same thing Wednesday. Thursday, I didn't hear much," SNC Squared's Motazedi said.
In New Jersey, Mazzanti was struggling. His company, his customers and much of the Metro New York area were dazed from Sandy's punch.
"Needless to say the community in Hoboken and many of our customers were shell shocked at the magnitude of the storm," Mazzanti said. "Some rose to the challenge and made decisions on how to abate the water quickly, and others stuck their heads in the ground like ostriches hoping this would all just go away. The expectation was things would change quickly and get back to normal. But as each day passed and power was not restored, the tensions rose. The simplest of items you take for granted became life changing emergencies."
Finally, Mazzanti had had enough. At 4:11 a.m. on Friday, Nov. 2, he sent off an email to Motazedi, Brian Lillo of JSO Technology and Shawn Brown of Snap Technology that said he was kidding himself that he and his staff could keep up the pace. Help.
"Only when the team was burning out and the flood of tickets from customers was not abating did an email go out to those we knew would respond," Mazzanti said. "The [cavalry] was brought in. That said, even as people were en route we doubted the need but by Sunday night, and an office filled with network engineers in various states of speaking with customers, was it clear the choice was correct."
The VAR and his staff knew what they had to do, but there weren't enough people to get it done, Mazzanti said. "The ball was going but people were burning out. They were super exhausted. We needed more resources, and I couldn't manufacture those resources."
Three hours later, Motazedi read the missive and was on an afternoon flight to New Jersey. Lillo, Brown and Randy Crockett of CCNS Consulting arrived on Saturday.
Having survived his own disaster, Motazedi packed his luggage with many items that he knew could be of great assistance during this time: energy bars, solar charges, power strips, extension cords, a weather radio, gloves and tools. "Everything we could take through an airport check in," Motazedi said.
He arrived about 11:30 p.m., Friday, and was immediately taken aback by what he saw. "We drove through the city, and it was black. Pitch black. There was one little [section] that had light, which had to be a police or fire station," Motazedi said.
The next day, Saturday, Mazzanti and Motazedi and the others were ready to go.
"[eMazzanti's staff] was not sleeping. Our role was to ensure that we can be the brain power, if you want to call it, to not only do the technical work but also to be a sounding board. We think this is right, that's not right," Motazedi said. "They were running on six hours of sleep for a whole week. Not eating well. No power. It wasn't good and the more it goes, the worse it gets."
The team met as a group to assess the entire situation, including what worked, what didn't work and then created a prioritized list of action items. Many of the VARs who flew in were C-level executives, but they were also engineers who could assess technical problems too.
NEXT: A Plan Of Action
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