Businesses Under Fire, Literally: The Lessons Learned
It was the alarm company calling. Motion sensors had triggered in the offices of Network Computing Architects, Gobeille's solution provider business in Bellevue, Wash.
He told the alarm company to dispatch the police, got in his car and headed toward the office. He tried calling the office to see if someone would pick up.
"We had 17 phone lines and the phone rang busy for all of them. That seemed odd," said Gobeille. "As I was coming down I-90 off the hill, I was the only one on the road and I could see a really large white cloud over downtown Bellevue with hints of red and orange and purple. It was about where our building was."
Gobeille was the first non-police or fire personnel on the scene to witness the biggest fire in Bellevue history, a five-alarm blaze that required help from three fire departments to keep it from spreading to other buildings, Gobeille said.
"All I could think was, 'There goes my data center. There goes my training center. There goes my front lobby.' Then I just watched as the whole building collapsed in on itself," he said.
The fire had started in a beauty salon in the building that didn't properly dispose of some chemical-soaked rags one night -- the rags caught fire and the fire eventually destroyed the entire building.
Network Computing Architects had nowhere to go.
Here are tips No. 7 and No. 8 in preparing for a disaster.
NEXT: Plan For An Alternate Location No. 7: Plan For An Alternate Location
The Small Business Administration recommends contacting a local real estate agent to get a list of available vacant office space in the area and advises business owners to make an agreement with a neighboring business to share office space if disaster strikes. In addition, companies should develop a strategy that allows employees to telecommute if necessary, according to the SBA.
For Gobeille and his company, there was no plan in place. Some employees gathered at a nearby coffee shop that had just opened up and worked from there. Others worked out of a small integration facility the company owned and that became a triage center of sorts for damaged equipment.
Network Computing Architects also had offices in Oregon and Northern California, so data had been backed up. But in Bellevue, everything else was gone -- even the important corporate documents that Gobeille had kept in a "fire-proof" safe. The safe was only rated to protect contents for 45 minutes to two hours; the fire lasted for several days before it was completely extinguished. "By the time we got into [the safe], everything was ash," Gobeille said.
The loss took a mental toll on Gobeille and on his nearly 60 employees. "Every day, I wanted to work hard and get past it but we had no building, no files, no computers," Gobeille said.
He even considered closing for good but was swayed to rebuild after employees called him at home in tears. Gobeille said he woke up three days after the fire, and just said, "Let's do it."
The phone company delivered a T1 line into the integration facility and the company built a temporary data center to keep customers running, Gobeille said.
Every employee returned and, incredibly, Network Computing Architects didn't lose a single customer.
There were challenges, of course. One competitor called several employees to offer them jobs, telling them that Network Computing Architects was not opening (Gobeille hadn't made the decision to reopen yet) and another solution provider trolled for leads by telling several vendors that the company was out of business.
Gobeille said he reached out to a local radio station for an interview to quash the rumors that Network Computing Architects was not coming back.
"My attitude to employees was, 'Let's start a new facility and make things better. We have the opportunity to start over,' " Gobeille said.
NEXT: Back Up Your Data No. 8: Back Up Your Data
Network Computing Architects survived despite a total devastation of its headquarters, but sometimes a small fire can do just as much damage. That was the case for Camera Corner Connecting Point, a Green Bay, Wis.-based solution provider.
Camera Corner suffered a fire in March 2008 that was contained to the company's data center. The problem was that it was the data center that contained the data, websites and more for hundreds of customers.
While the solution provider's offices, lobby and integration facility were fine, the blaze knocked CEO Rick Chernick's company off its feet.
"Everybody think they're all set because they carry a spare tire. But they never think they'll use it and they never check to see if there is air in it. We were not ready for a disaster. You think you're prepared. You think the tire has air in it," Chernick said.
To make matters worse, the fire happened on a holiday weekend and it took several days before Camera Corner could even get replacement equipment to begin the rebuilding process.
"Day one, if someone tells you your Internet is down, you might say, 'OK, when will it be back up?' That's what a thousand people were asking us. We couldn't take calls fast enough," Chernick said.
Chernick learned the hard way that it's important to have data backed up off-site. According to the SBA, critical information such as financial records, employee information, client, property and inventory records should be high on the list. Also, solution providers should make it a part of their routine to regularly back up files and test their data backup plans.
For Camera Corner, the physical damage was extensive, but so was the business damage. It took more than a week before every customer's data and image had been restored and back online. The solution provider did a lot of Web hosting on behalf of clients, so customers' websites were down, but trying to salvage data from tape drives was an even more long and resource-intensive process, Chernick said.
Camera Corner dedicated a team to contact customers and had a prioritized list of customers to work on. Small companies paying $5 a month for a website would have to wait while Chernick's crew worked on bigger companies with managed services contracts in place.
Camera Corner also was proactive in thanking customers, delivering 40-inch Sony TVs to numerous clients as a gift for sticking with the company.
"It hurt me to hurt any of my customers. It's one thing if it affects your own company but when you have so many other companies up and running, it's tough. We said this is for not being the pain you could have been and sticking with me. It was just a thanks for being good to us," Chernick said. "In fact, we actually gained some customers. A couple people said, 'Hey, you made it through a fire. I want you to come talk to me.'
"We can go into customers now and say, 'Let's talk about your business. Is it protected? Really protected?' Had our tapes only been in the building, we never would have recovered. 'Do you take them in a truck yourself? Are those protected? Is a technician supposed to take them home?’ That's an issue. 'Where are the tapes right now?' They say, 'Let me find out.' You should know. If the tape is lost or stolen on the way home, you're in trouble."