Making Sense Out of Sandy: Lessons Learned and Future Plans

By the time Hurricane Sandy had slammed into the East Coast near Atlantic City on the night of Oct. 29, it may have degenerated in a post-tropical cyclone, but the damage done to New York City’s office buildings by this massive storm was historic. And not just in terms of the millions of gallons of water that property management crews had to pump back into New York Harbor, or the fact that some skyscrapers in Lower Manhattan are still running on generator power today.

It was historic in that it called on building teams to go beyond their Emergency Action and Business Continuity Plans and enter a new realm of disaster recovery. It turned well-intentioned Department of Buildings, FDNY and Department of Environmental Protection's rules on their head and called into question codes and regulations that made eminent sense before the disaster. And BOMA/NY, whose Hurricane Sandy Lessons Learned Task Force has just completed a survey of BOMA/NY members to see what worked, what didn’t and what might be needed in the future, is helping to write new rules for this type of disaster.

The report, its findings and lessons learned were shared with a packed seminar hosted by BOMA/NY on Jan. 30 where attendees learned that 44 pecent of those who responded had suffered physical damage from the storm—most prominently flooding, followed by wind damage.

Moderated by Walter F. Ulmer III, CBCI, (left) member of the Task Force, the Lessons Learned panel covered 11 key response areas ranging from staffing and technology, to tenant communications, security, building codes, legal and insurance issues and more.

3) continue to function as a central information clearinghouse—the 65 BOMA/NY Alerts analyzed and distributed by Director of Legislative Affairs Sylvester Giustino throughout the storm served as an excellent information conduit from city agencies, Con Edison and the like

Insurance

The key area that was most overlooked was insurance, reported panelist John Brandstetter, (left) a task force member who heads BOMA/NY’s Weather Response Subcommittee—62 percent had not coordinated with insurers prior to the storm. He explained that full coverage of commercial claims "is no longer the rule, as underwriting has grown in detail and complexity due to insurance companies learning from their experiences with previous storm claims. Asset Managers used to having full coverage are now finding that is no longer true. Corporate and operations need to work together to fully understand what is and is not covered...not an easy task."

Legal panelist John E. Osborn, Esq. also a Task Force member, added that buildings now going through the claims process for Superstorm Sandy are finding out the hard way what is and is not covered, including some obvious repercussions from flooding, such as mold.

Operations

"It’s just as important to know how to shut down a building as it is to start it up," said panelist Louis J. Trimboli, RPA/FMA/LEED AP, Co-Chair of BOMA/NY’s Preparedness Committee, who also co-chaired the Task Force. He recommended having a checklist for both shut down and restoration. Also recommended were shutting down unneeded systems in advance to mitigate flood or wind damage, as well as problems powering up the building once the grid is turned back on.

Other recommendations included: pre-ordering additional fuel in advance—even if that meant one’s building was higher up on the list to receive fuel once the roads opened up again; knowing your building’s power specifications as far as how little and how much power can be withstood; re-testing the emergency generator and having a smaller, redundant emergency generator available to help keep phones and laptops charged.

Tenant communications were key, added BOMA/NY Secretary Ronald S. Zeccardi, who also co-chaired the Task Force. He emphasized the need to make sure tenants are educated in advance on procedures such as post-event access, and that building management keep tenants as informed as possible throughout the event and the recovery aftermath. It was repeatedly stressed that good communications lists with back-up emails and phone numbers are vital, and both tenants and building staff alike should pre-test any communications systems as much in advance as possible.

As on 9/11, staff did not leave their posts and many slept in the building. Others simply could

not make it in. Strong recommendations for the future included making sure that there was staff job knowledge redundancy, particular in key engineering jobs such as the chief; keeping enough non-perishable food on hand and making provisions for maintaining personal cleanliness.

Debriefing, learning from mistakes and even keeping an event log were all advised by the panelists who strongly urged learning from past mistakes. While not all of the aspects of this highly unusual and divergent storm could have been foreseen, panelist and Task Force member John E. Osborn, Esq. emphasized, "respect history." And above all, recommended both Giustino and Ulmer, as a potential storm threatened for that very afternoon—heed the weather reports: "This was not an isolated incident—there will be more."