Planning for the Unthinkable

By Nicole Millman-Falk, CAE

The horrific terrorist attacks of 9/11 spurred action many associations to develop disaster plans for their organizations in general and their meetings and conferences in particular. For others, it was three 100-year storms occurring in the last 18 months. And still others, who think nothing can happen to their organizations have not put any plans in place yet. That’s a big mistake, according to the panelists at MeetNY who spoke on Disaster Planning: Are You Serious? The program was one of two educational sessions presented at MeetNY.

Left to right: Joel A. Dolci, CAE, NYSAE President; Carter Keithley, NYSAE Chairman of the Board; Andrej Suskavcevic, President and CEO; Craft & Hobby Association; Jeffrey Fagan, Director, National Accounts Marriott Global Sales Organization, and Vice- Chair of MeetNY; Dean D’Anna, Account Director Starwood Hotels & Resorts, and Chair of MeetNY; Salvatore Chiarelli, managing director, conferences and events, Securities Industry & Financial Markets Association; Jerry Cito, first Vice President, Convention Cevelopment, NYC & Company; Gary Musich, vice president of convention development, Atlantic City Convention & Visitors Authority; Gregg Talley, FASAE, CAE, president and CEO, Talley Management Group.

“Clearly our world is changing; we need to be more prepared than I suspect we have been to deal with this,” cautioned Gregg Talley, FASAE, CAE, president & CEO, Talley Management Group, panel moderator. He was joined by: Salvatore Chiarelli, managing director, conferences and events, Securities Industry & Financial Markets Association; Andrej Suskavcevic, president & CEO, Craft & Hobby Association; Gary Musich, vice president convention development, Atlantic City Convention & Visitors Authority; and Jerry Cito, first vice president, convention development, NYC & Company.

The Craft & Hobby Association put a disaster plan together following 9/11. “We learned from 9/11 that you cannot have your back-up information within the ‘blast’ location of your facility,” said Suskavcevic, who uses a Toronto, Canada, firm for data back-up. Located in New Jersey, its offices were closed for two weeks following Hurricane Sandy. Even though its offices lost all power, Internet, telephone, and power capacity, it was able to start using its disaster recovery server two days after the storm hit.

“Virtually every member of my staff lost power in their homes, four staff were stranded in Texas, and I found myself with hundreds of others working in a local gym. Communicating with staff was critical,” said Suskavcevic. “Even though we had everyone’s home number, we found texting worked best because many had lost power in their homes as well.” Morning conference calls with all senior staff helped bring the team in focus. “We also instituted a 24-hour policy of responding to a member. Even if we couldn’t answer their questions, we wanted members to know that we received them.”

Lessons Learned

• Back up accounting software, as well as data.
• Establish a communication tree: Who at the organization is qualified to make decisions/announcements to the public? If that person is unavailable, who’s next?
• Include all staff, both executive and support, in daily communications.
• Before each meeting/convention, make sure all staff reviews the disaster plan.
• Make sure there is some redundancy in jobs, so that if a staff member is unavailable, someone can do their job and/or parts of their job until the person is back.

Best Practices
The Securities Industry & Financial Markets Association exemplifies best practices in disaster planning. It was fully operational only three minutes after it lost power from Hurricane Sandy. Because of his previous job experience with the Risk Management Society, Chiarelli asked for a disaster plan one week into his new job. “I never thought I’d need it, but I was impressed when I received two plans-one for our association and one for Wall Street.” Among the items in place at his association:

• Every employee, from the mailroom to executive staff, has a smart phone, either their own or one provided by the association. Each staff person is then given a unique ID code to remotely connect to the system. Each staff is also given two back-up batteries to their phones, which must be charged at all times. All staff also needed to have a battery back-up for their laptops.
• Every employee met with the IT Department one week before the storm was expected to hit, to ensure that their plans were up-to-date.
• All managing directors and higher receive a company tablet.
• For one week, prior to the storm, the office ran only using its back-up system (located in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania) to make sure that it could operate efficiently and there was enough bandwidth to run on if the association lost power for a week.

Concluded Sal: “It’s important to remember that while the East Coast was shut down, the rest of the country was up and running. Just because we were impacted here doesn't mean world stopped.”

Have a Written Plan
The Atlantic City Convention and Visitors Authority as a written crisis plan that includes everything from who is responsible for what in the plan, to a possible evacuation process, to communication plans, to emergency services, to even lists of repair personnel. “Communication during a crisis is key,” said Musich. “Our plan needed to include who is going to make phone calls? Who will communicate with FEMA, the Red Cross, first responders

Gary Musich

“The spiderweb of our community broke down, so the Convention Center came together to coordinate,” said Musich. Following evacuation of nearby areas, the Atlantic City Convention Center housed 600 people for up to 10 days following Hurricane Sandy and needed to also coordinate medical services, trauma counseling, providing food, showers, and other support services. “We were fortunate to have so many people, from Boston to the Midwest donating food, diapers, supplies,” said Musich, “but also had to think about how do you deal with 20 tractor trailers coming in every day.”

Jerry Cito

Because it was “more concerned about our local community than an immediate loss of money, we advised 90 meetings and convention/trade shows to cancel,” said Musich. “I am pleased that most of those have rebooked in our facility.”

“Even if you don’t have a plan,” said Cito, “chances are you are working with a hotel or convention and visitors bureau that already does.” NYC & Company, for example, works with the New York City Mayor’s Office to ensure that there’s a consistent message going out to its 18 international offices, as well as to its national locations, and local members. “Following Super Storm Sandy, we also collected information from members—who was open? what damage was sustained?—and shared that information with our network, as well as with the local chapters of MPI, NYSAE, SITE, so as many people could hear the message.”

“We have no idea when our lives, either personal or professional, will be turned upside down, so ultimately, it’s our responsibility to be prepared,” said Talley. If your association doesn’t have a plan in place, start with your hotel partners, advised Talley, since “they are all prepared. Figure out what are the critical functions you need to operate as a business and what backups you will put in place if your meeting site, your data, your association’s physical facilities were compromised.”

Nicole Millman-Falk, CAE, is president of Millman-Falk Communications, LLC, and managing editor for NYSAE’s InView. She is also vice chair of the Awards Committee. She can be reached at 201-652-1687; mfc32@optonline.net; or millmanfalk@nysaenet.org.