Episode 10 – Disaster Preparedness: Lessons Learned

Welcome to the TRSA podcast. Providing interviews and insights from the linen, uniform, and facility services industry. Most Americans might not realize it, but they benefit at least once per week from the cleanliness and safety of laundered, reusable linens, uniforms, towels, mats and other products provided by various businesses and organizations. TRSA represents the companies that supply, launder, and maintain linens and uniforms. And in this podcast, we will bring the thought leaders of the industry to you.

 

We’re back with another episode of the Linen Uniform and Facility Services podcast, interviews and insights by TRSA. I’m your host, Jason Risley. TRSA’s senior editor of digital and new media. TRSA recently hosted its 7th annual health care conference on November 28th 29th in Charlotte, North Carolina. The 2 day event was attended by nearly 200 executives from laundry operators and supplier companies serving the health care sector.

 

The conference kicked off with a keynote address on key trends affecting the health care market now and into the foreseeable future by Cece Conolly, the President and CEO of the Alliance of Community Health Plans. Other topics discussed on the conference’s opening day included a look at the long term care market such as nursing homes, smart textile innovations, preparing for a tour of your laundry facility with hospital infection staff, outpatient medical trends, and more. The 2nd day of the conference featured a tour of OSCO’s hygienically clean certified Charlotte location, as well as a panel presentation on disaster preparedness that we’ll listen to in today’s episode. The panel featured Mark Carter, the president of UpToDate Laundry in Baltimore, Mike Lang, a process analyst at Unitex in Elmsford, New York, Michael Shulevitz, the president of Cadillac Uniform and Linen Supply in Puerto Rico, and Tim Topornicki, the owner of Topper Linen Supply in Toronto. The panel was moderated by Joseph Ricci, the president and CEO of TRSA.

 

Without further delay, let’s listen in to the presentation from TRSA’s 7th Annual Healthcare Conference. So So this morning is our disaster preparedness program lessons learned. We were just talking a while ago. We’ve got, you know, we’ve got snow, we got a hurricane, we have flooding, and we have fire. So we have everything but earthquake pretty much up here.

 

So we’ll kind of talk about where they’ve gone and where they’re where they’re going. So this morning, we’ve got Mark Carter, Mike Lang, Michael Shulevitz, and Tim DePoroniecki. Mark Carter, who’s on the end. He’s been in the industry 25 years in various roles within our industry, Up to date, named Mark the president in 2011, and he’s gone through dramatic changes, some of them as a result of the snowstorm. He’ll talk about that when he gets up and and gives you some of his information.

 

Mike Lang is a process analyst for Inditex. He’s spoke here, yesterday a couple of times, so everybody’s met, Mike. He’s a principal focus in the company. He’s worked with subject matter experts reviewing, refining documents. He graduated from West Point in 2000 and completed his army career as captain in 2008.

 

Michael Shulevitz is president of Cadillac Uniform Services Services, a linen supply for the past 30 years. His company is located in Puerto Rico, which was obviously affected by hurricane Maria when it hit the island last September. He’s gonna talk about that impact and lessons learned from that. And then, Tim Tepornicki. He’s been committed to providing exceptional level of service at Topper Lending and New Farm Service in Toronto.

 

Through a purchase program in 1996, he became the president of Topper and began to oversee all the planned operations and maintenance. Without any further words from me, we’ll get started, and we’ll start with the Snowzilla. So, Mark, I think you’re up. Okay. Welcome.

 

I’m Mark Carter with Up to Up to Date Laundry in Baltimore, Maryland. Wanna talk about the efforts of my team in Baltimore during what we call the the Snowzilla Blizzard, a few years ago. We actually were awarded the above and beyond service award, for our efforts in response to a blizzard that occurred in the area. Large blizzard, over 40 inches of snow in many areas, obviously, with drifting and and and things like that really crippling to the mid Atlantic region as a whole and, to many of the businesses and folks in the area was devastating. For us, really, our disaster preparedness plan, we started early.

 

We actually use some advanced forecasting. We actually pay for a service that provides us more detailed forecasting in advance. So we had a pretty good feel that the storm was really gonna be what they said it was gonna be. In many cases, you get into these situations and storms don’t turn out to be what they are. We started doing that, I guess, about 5 years ago and invested in paying a service for forecasting specific to the areas that we serviced, and it really has helped us a lot.

 

So some of the logistical stuff, obviously, that starts way in advance of any storm. If you think a storm’s coming, you think a hurricane’s coming, we’re looking at the forecasting models and some of the predictive things and see what the risk percentage wise of a storm coming to your area. And we really started out in this situation with that. Knowing that when we go into the logistical mode, we’re talking about some of the lessons we have learned, and talking to the emergency management folks in the local area. Probably one of the key things early is getting engaged with that folk with those folks, You know, within the city, the state of Maryland where we are, understanding who those folks are, how their departments operate, having cell phone numbers, as opposed to, calling the state or agency.

 

Many times, those folks are not gonna be in the office in emergency mode or they’re they’re, out on leave themselves, and there’s turnover in those situations. So being one of the lessons we’ve learned is being in contact with those those vocal officials to understand that you’re a priority and why you’re a priority and having those conversations in advance of a storm coming. When there’s no snow on the ground, having those conversations and building that relationship so they understand who you are. The other thing logistically is working with your customers. We’ve learned that most of the hospitals in the area or the health cares have real power organizationally within the state and city.

 

So communicating with them and making sure they understand to keep certain routes open. We’ve really had a great effort in that case with the city of Baltimore and the state in keeping the major thoroughfares open as well as the major roads coming to our facilities, was really critical for us. Some of the logistical stuff. Employees, Many cases we, you know, take for granted the fact that they can get to work. We kept folks on-site and worked throughout the storm.

 

So our folks, we, had already made arrangements in advance to have a local hotel. We provided transportation back and forth to this hotel. We plowed that street when the city wasn’t planning. We were planning with our own plows, good or bad, to get back and forth to that facility. So we kept employees on-site.

 

Our employees actually enjoyed this process. It was almost like vacation days for them. We provide all the food. They’re in the hotel. They had a good old time.

 

Meanwhile, we were taking care of our customers, so it worked out very well. But getting all that food in advance, things that we can make, we had, freezers full of foods that could be microwaved. We had Chick Fil A who who actually stayed open during the storm, believe it or not, and was delivering food on a record basis to us, if not us picking it up. So we did have the food side taken care of. So they were well fed.

 

Some of the things that in working with the city and state officials were were to make folks that were getting transportation because the bus service was shut down. If they were getting driven there, we were picking we were actually picking people up to get them to work, was that they were deemed essential employees. We actually had a letter in a format that the city had given us to make sure any staff that was out on the street had this letter with them if they got stopped for any reason, say, had you had hey. You have to be off the street. They had this letter from the city in advance of the storm that said they could be out there.

 

So that was one of the things we learned working with those folks. And then you get down and you get into some of the specifics, obviously, changes in delivery times, making sure, the customers have linen in advance of the storm, preparations in those areas where it’s, in some cases, building bed packs for doctors and nurses that are locked down in these hospitals during a storm, some of those preparations. For us, specifically, we have complete power backup generation in both facilities. So, we actually process for some of the other, health care laundry providers in the area that did not have power because we had power throughout the storm. And believe it or not, we only lost power for about an hour during the whole storm, but we had that capability if we needed it.

 

But in many areas of the city, power was out. So we’re fortunate. But having those redundant capabilities where you can run your whole facility as opposed to a modified version, I think, is really critical, in the mission that we have in terms of making sure the hospitals are uninterrupted. Customer customer adjustments, coordination of advanced deliveries and use of reserves. Seems like common sense, but for for many of the hospitals, they wait till the last second.

 

They’re not looking at the forecasting models in some cases. And at the last second, they they, want everything delivered to them all at one time. So working with them. Some of those logistics from a customer perspective are as simple as ensuring that their loading docks are not even gonna be plowed and open when you get there. We would show up for deliveries and and have to go get the, whatever maintenance staff they had or the off-site lawn and landscaping company that they had that was supposed to be plowing snow to get their loading docks plowed out so you can get our truck there.

 

We were there waiting, but we couldn’t even get the dock. So I think working with your customers, I understand that they must keep their docks in the roads and entranceways, where your tractor trailers swing in is really critical. In many cases, they they build up the snow in areas where you can’t even back your tractor trailer in because you don’t have the swing radius, when all that snow is in the area when you get into a blizzard situation. We actually had contracted with folks to plow our facility around the clock. So we had people continually plowing as opposed to trying to move large amounts of snow.

 

We had front end loaders and plows and folks working on-site. They actually, you know, spent the night at our facility. We had brought in cots and food and everything for those folks, and, that part of the snow removal for our for the process for us went on throughout the night and the days days in the storm. You know, some this this goes through some of the, the effects on life. I think one of the big things there for us was given the the number of hotels that were packed and filled in our region, people stranded, that we’d already secured, you know, the hotel in advance.

 

So we already had an agreement in place with the local hotel, and we still have that standing situation if we have to use it. So that advanced planning really comes into into play. We paired down our operations. We went from 2 shifts down to 1. A lot of teamwork, a lot of transportation back and forth before we drive vehicles, back and forth between the hotel.

 

So, you know, great team effort. Obviously, it’s not just the snow. It’s the GalForce winds knocking out power, and some of, you know, the geographical stuff in our area. I think I think just the the lessons really for us were early connection with the city, the state, understanding, you know, how things are gonna operate from their standpoint logistically, Having the staff on-site site and, really staying there. The weather forecasting and modeling, looking at that is something that we do now that we hadn’t done.

 

I think just the coordinated efforts between the the the hospitals and your staff on-site really really will make a difference in a storm. So some of the things we’ve learned. Thank you. Okay. Good morning, everybody.

 

So I’m gonna talk today about Hurricane Sandy, which affected our operations. It’s 6 years ago, roughly 6 years ago. To start off, to give you just some idea what hurricane Sandy was like, you know, the storm lasted for over a week, as hurricanes are, you know, characteristic of hurricanes, gale force winds, heavy rains, and flooding, but we also had snowfall at the end, which was unexpected. It wasn’t as significant in the, in terms of buildup in the New York area and, New Jersey and Connecticut, but it certainly affected us. I’ll tell you one of the, stories of how it affected us there at the end.

 

Geographic area effects, the storm traveled up from Jamaica all along the East Coast, and it ended in Canada. So for our Unitex, we’re, you know, throughout the the East Coast, so it had significant effects on, all of our plants, but, specifically, it had major effects on our New Jersey plants. Estimates of damage, to give you an idea, 70,000,000,000 US dollars, and there were 200 deaths. So it’s a significant storm. I was not with Unitex at the time.

 

I interviewed Rob Potek and Charlie Edelman with my company to get an an idea, as to how the the hurricane affected, the company, but I was in Maryland, and, I remember taking a look at on the news about what was happening in New Jersey and New York, and it was a significant amount of damage and flooding. So there there were some serious problems for us in terms of service to our customers. In terms of advanced planning, Unitex did as much planning as we could prior to the storm hitting. Some considerations that we made for logistics, you know, you know, we knew we weren’t gonna have to, deliver to those customers because they were gonna be closed. Even, you know, non some nonelective procedures at customer sites were canceled as well.

 

Linen usage by our customers was down. We still needed to deliver, of course, to any of the open customers, but, the decreased number of deliveries, that gave us a little bit of, flexibility. We didn’t have to produce as much during during the time. Road closures. So road closures, that should also put, bridge and tunnel closures too because of the bridge and tunnels into, into New York City are, significant, traffic points.

 

So, you know, with road closures, you we couldn’t travel on certain roads, without, you know, certain bridges and tunnels closed that just affects how easily we can get into the city. Also, anybody else who’s traveling now has to go through those choke points. So what we had to do is we had to give consideration for where our truck’s going and how long are they gonna be trapped in certain areas. You know, what’s gonna be the congestion in the areas? How is that gonna affect our delivery times?

 

Power. This was a significant issue. So we coordinated for a generator in advance of the storm. We rented 1. So we had to pay I don’t know what it’s called, disaster pricing, whatever it is, you know, because everybody’s looking for power generation, But we rented a generator in advance and stationed the generator in New Brunswick with our 2 facilities down there, which was a really great decision.

 

We’ll talk about that in the lessons learned, but, you know, we had to spoke with Jim Curiale, the corporate engineer for my company, and he said he had to jump all over the place trying to find the generator that he could get, and we eventually got one. We had to have private security on-site in New Brunswick, for two reasons. 1 was, we anticipated if the storm hit as as badly as it was going to, fuel would be an issue, guarding the trucks to ensure that nobody was trying to siphon fuel out of our trucks. 2nd, the generator itself. Although, you know, the idea of somebody stealing the full generator is probably pretty small, the electrical connections, the wiring, was apparently very expensive.

 

So we had private security on-site, and, they actually had to chase some people off, for one of the nights that they were there. So we coordinated for that in advance, and that was another good decision. In terms of customer adjustments, pretty standard approach. We look to do as many advance deliveries as we could based upon what we knew of our customers who are gonna be open, who are still gonna be serving patients during that time. We looked to implement cuts and use of reserve.

 

You know, that’s pretty standard, pretty common sense. Mark had mentioned the same thing. You know, sometimes the customers wait until the last minute in order to give you an idea what they had. So we had to work pretty heavily with our inventory specialists that we have in the company as well as our account managers to get a good sense for what does the customer have, you know, how long can they last off of their reserve in order to prioritize who we have to deliver to. The big point, though, is we made a point and we did.

 

We served all of our open customers. So, I mean, that’s a nonnegotiable point for us. We’re providing our service, so, we did that. Again, as I mentioned earlier, anticipating and knowing that many of them ended up closing during the, the hurricane, that enabled us to provide the service that we needed to for our Oakland customers, give us a little flexibility. In terms of local weather preparations, like, at the plant, so we did fleet inspections.

 

You know, we do them regularly anyway, but in advance of the storm, we verified our headlights working, windshield wipers working, you know, taillights, brake lights, turn signals, all of that, make sure that all the trucks are prepared when they have to go out. 2, you know, do they have their emergency kits prepared as well? Do you know, fully stocked emergency kits and that they have them on on the trucks. 2nd, fueling, making sure that all of the trucks were fueled in advance of the storm. We expected that there might be either fuel rationing or it might be difficult to get fuel, there might be lines for it, so we made sure all of our trucks were refueled in advance of the storm.

 

And last, I wanna raise a point about, contact rosters. Mark Brady mentioned the idea of having, you know, local numbers for emergency providers or for officials, local government officials on hand, that as well as, all of our employee contact rosters. So, making sure that we could alert our employees in the event that we’re not opening up or we have power outages, which played a role, later on once the storm actually hit. In terms of the effects on life, the major effect that we experienced was power outages. There were millions of people without power for an extended period of time.

 

Our New Brunswick facilities, we have a 2 plants there, a bulk processing plant and a retail medical plant. They’re right next door to each other, adjacent. For those who attended, I think, the 2015 conference, we did tours there. Both of those were out of power for numerous days, and then our MediPeral plant in Prothamboy, our MediPeral plant is resident items, so it does a lot of resident items as well as some specialty items. All three of those plants were out of power for numerous days.

 

And then, of course, local area in terms of, people were also out of power in those areas. I already mentioned road, bridge, and tunnel closures. Alright. So there were road, bridge, and tunnel closures, and that affected where we could drive and how long it took us to get to customer sites that were open. The customer closures, I already mentioned.

 

In terms of fuel control, we were able to, work with Ryder to get our trucks in to get, refueled. One of the things that we had to do though as well was consistently refuel the generator. So we were taking I don’t know what size we’re taking, drums over there to get filled up so that we could refill the generator. And, we had to go back and forth with Ryder to let them know, like, hey. Our fuel usage is gonna increase significantly because we’re powering our plant with this generator.

 

But I also wanna point out for, what happened with us in New Brunswick was the closest gas station for our employees or, you know, just the local populace that was actually, commandeered by, the police and used specifically to refuel emergency services. You know, giving advanced consideration to where you’re gonna be able to refill, where your employees are gonna be able to refill if they’re not staying in hotels local. I mean, you have to give consideration to that as well. Hotel shortages, I was glad Mark brought this up for his part of the presentation. So, my company has 11 plants stationed in, Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey.

 

Our corporate headquarters at the time was in, one of our plants in Mount Vernon in New York. So our corporate staff, me included, whenever I go visit plants, it’s a significant drive time between, you know, our furthest plant north and our fur our furthest plant north is in, Hartford or South Windsor, Connecticut, which is right outside of Hartford, and then our furthest plant south are the the New Brunswick facilities. And it’s probably a a 3, 3 and a half hour drive, You know, especially, you you have to consider too traffic is pretty, extensive in, the New York Metropolitan area. So you hit the wrong traffic, you get construction. If you remember Bridgegate, with, with New Jersey when that made the news, you can get backed up significantly.

 

We had not booked rooms, in hotels, so our corporate staff, specifically regional managers, Rob Potak, and then, the corporate engineers, they were having to drive home every day. And with road bridge tunnel closures, long work day because we, we had power outages and had to make adjustments, it added extensively to their days. And that leads into the next thing, the effects on operations. The reason why our corporate staff was having to drive down was, as I mentioned already, we had lost power, completely in New Brunswick, and, we had at the time, our 10 b facility had been open for quite some time, and it was already retail medical retail medical facility, was still very young, so it had not ramped up to its full productive capability. When we had the power outage, we had the generator right there on-site, and we knew this going in.

 

There was nothing we could do about it, but our 10 b bulk facility was not generator ready. 10 a, the retail medical facility, was generator ready. So we hooked up the generator to 10 a, and then we had to shuttle, which gets into the shuttling product. We had to shuttle product from 10 b to 10 a. Now they’re adjacent.

 

There’s a a wall dividing the 2. You can actually walk between some doors to get from one plant to the next without having to go outside. Sounds easy. Oh, well, it’s not that far of a a trip from shuttling the product from 10 b to 10 a, but it adds a significant amount of labor into your process. Additionally, 10 a is a retail medical facility, the one that we’re that we were able to get power to, b is a bulk facility.

 

So our 10 b plant has 2 tunnels. Our 10 a plant only has 1. They also in 10 b, we also had far more finishing machines, a lot more sigmas, the, the ironers that we had, it’s much more numerous, versus 10 a. So not only did we have to shuttle the product, now we we we can’t process the product nearly as quickly as we could in 10 b. So that had a significant effect on things.

 

As I mentioned earlier, because numerous many of our customers were closed at the time, you know, we didn’t have to produce at the same rate that is expected when we didn’t have the emergency, but it’s still it was a significant challenge. In terms of, service, so customers were closed. Obviously, we we didn’t have to deliver to those. For those that were open, the challenges really were getting getting the product completed and delivered to them, getting there on time as best we could. Some of the challenges that we had, though, was if we couldn’t produce all of the product in New Brunswick because we had to shuttle some of that product out of New Brunswick York.

 

Deliveries to customers, sometimes we had to take 2 trucks to 1 customer. You know, we would send out a a truck. It’s it’s not the the best answer, but when you’re in an emergency, you kinda have to do these things. You send 1 truck with a partial load or, you know, not the full amount that you would normally deliver and then another truck comes. So that adds some challenges too.

 

Are the trucks showing up at the same time? If they are, do they have to wait? Who else is waiting for the loading dock, to use? 2nd, you have drivers who’ve never delivered to, the facilities having to take, cover down to these facilities, so it adds, adds a challenge, a significant challenge in making sure that all of that works right. Refueling, I mentioned this already, you know, we did have to go back and forth with Ryder a bit to let them know, you know, hey.

 

We have a generator, and now we’re gonna be using a lot of fuel for that generator. I don’t recall and and, I don’t Rob didn’t mention anything about, rat you know, if they limited us in terms of our fuel consumption, I think it was just, you know, them raising red flags about how much we were using and such. But for maintenance and security, maintenance, any kind of corporate engineering major projects that we have, we’re all put on hold for the duration of the storm and even afterwards while we’re playing catch up. So, corporate engineering staff, whatever they had planned to do in 10 a was all put on hold because our 10 a facility was now processing all of the New Brunswick that we were that we were, laundering. Anything that we were doing in 10 b, the bulk facility that had no power, all of those projects were put on hold, and anything that they had planned on any other facilities, in, the company were all put on hold.

 

So it’s, you know, significant. You lose some time with whatever projects that you were doing. For security, I mentioned that already. The guys the private security guards that we hired did have to chase people off the site at one point. I don’t know what they were doing.

 

Thankfully, they didn’t have to, you know, apprehend them or anything like that. They didn’t have to use force, but they still certainly, you know, approached the guys and and got them off of the site. That was mostly to protect the generator, but, again, also to, ensure nobody was stealing our fuel. One last thing I wanted to mention that I forgot to mention was our, meta apparel facility, the one in Perth Amboy. This one does the, resonant items.

 

We actually had to ship all of those resonant items to our other med apparel facility in Middlebury, Connecticut. So when I talked about the drive times, that’s a significant drive time that we’re taking all of that linen and or all of those resident items, driving them all the way up to another plant in Connecticut, processing it there, and then have to drive it right back to to deliver it. So, you can imagine the amount of labor and the coordination that goes into it. It’s it’s quite significant. That should do it for me.

 

Morning. Thank you and for inviting me. My name is Michael Shulevitz, Cadillac Uniform Living Supply in Puerto Rico. I’m here to talk about hurricane Maria. As you can see from the slide, hurricane Maria went right over top of Puerto Rico, entering on the southeast corner, more or less leaving on the northeast corner, with winds of a 155 miles an hour and about 40 inches of rain.

 

The impact on hurricane Maria for the island was a complete loss of electricity on the island. And since almost all water is pumped with electricity, essentially loss of water. And even more interesting and more challenging was a loss of communication. So phone lines, landlines were working, but nobody has any. Cell phones were down except in a very small area.

 

And there’s actually a funny story because for about 3 days in the San Juan metropolitan area, AT and T was working. On the 3rd day, it stopped working. Why? They have 3 days of diesel with their generators on their towers. There is a with the loss of communication, there is a total logistic supply chain breakdown in Puerto Rico.

 

So it’s not just that we couldn’t get deliveries of anything. Nobody could get deliveries of anything. They couldn’t get trucks to the docks to get the trailers off the docks. They couldn’t get gas stations couldn’t get deliveries. The major suppliers were insisting upon police escort for everything, which led to some interesting, and we’ll get to.

 

There was significant damage on the island. And our specific damage, that is our substation. We have our own substation within our plant. As you can see, the structure is twisted off its base. The transformer is down.

 

That meant we were without power for about 2 and a half months. Our truck repair shop, the roof was gone. Most of it was blown away. Our offices lost its built up roof. In fact, we think the office’s built up roof is what hit the substation and twisted it off the base because we found the roofing at the base of the substation.

 

More of our offices and then our warehouse also lost part of its roof and was semi flooded. When we talk about preparation, when you’re in Puerto Rico, you’re living in hurricane alley. So preparation started with the design of the building. There’s no natural gas piped into Puerto Rico, so all of our fuels are on-site. We carry a significant amount of fuel on-site, LPG, for our dryers, bunker for our boilers.

 

We did not carry enough diesel for our generators and trucks. We have gasoline for our trucks on-site also. Designed that way. The other thing that we have is we’re independent of water. When we need to, we have 2 2 wells that will supply us water.

 

We had a fairly well practiced hurricane plan. As a matter of fact, that hurricane plan had been practiced about 3 weeks earlier when another hurricane passed within about 50 miles of us called Hurricane Irma, which destroyed the Virgin Islands. And I think went on to do something in the United States, but I’m not sure. We review review it every season. It’s something we’re used to.

 

We make sure all of our tankage is full. Beforehand, you know, with hurricanes, you usually have a as you did mark here with the storm, you have a good, good indication how close it’s gonna get. As it gets closer, you prepare your start enacting your parents even though you’re hoping greatly that it will make the last minute turn and go away. We carry we have a hurricane kit within the plant that has tarps, raincoats, flashlights, extra batteries, drinking water, some basic tools, and and and plywood, screws, and things like that. Drinking water.

 

You need to we carry on site. We prepare and buy a significant amount of drinking water to keep on-site when we think there’s something going to happen because it’s not available any longer. One of the things that we learned and we kinda do is certain key suppliers, think about your diesel supplier, Make sure that he’s paid up to date, your credit’s good, and everybody’s happy because otherwise, they turn into a cash only delivery system. We clean your area. Any potential frying things, we go up on the roof, clean all the roof drains and everything else.

 

The last one on the column there that was VITA actually worked. All computers, all electronics were put on top of desks, draped with plastic bags and tarps on top. We lost the roof of our offices, as you saw, were completely flooded. I’m still using the same computer. I didn’t take it home.

 

I put it on my desk. I put a big plastic bag on top of it. It the floor was soaked. There was a couple inches in the water on the floor. Our computers lasted.

 

That’s actually another interesting lesson. As a matter of fact, we found out that on our electronic insurance side and nobody here has mentioned insurance. That’s another interesting aspect, our our our tour side basically told us, claim everything that was in the building, broken or not, and he was right because within 3 to 6 months, almost all of it died just because it was open to so much humidity for so long. We’ve set up, we seal all our windows, we’ve worn up our doors, worn up our windows if we don’t have hard locking mechanisms on them. We’ve now built additional mechanisms we’ll get into.

 

All of our hospital customers, we went around and left a week’s worth of linen on-site with them, not knowing exactly when to go back. We had advanced deliveries to all other large customers that were able to keep it and that we had the capability of doing so. Communication with employees we were we failed. We didn’t do a good job. We didn’t anticipate the level of lack of cell phone coverage that happened.

 

We didn’t have a landline at work at our plant that worked, so that became a problem. We have areas of our building that are vulnerable. This area here is vulnerable to wind damage. You know, we’re it’s cold in Puerto Rico, so our loading and unloading docks are all wide open. So our loading docks were here and unloading docks were here.

 

So we took our fleet, which is in here, and parked it around the building to use it as a windshield. We expected this building to go. It suffered more damage. We were very worried about our loading docks because they have overhanging roofs with just right up on overhanging roofs so the wind gets in there, it creates deposit. We feel that this was greatly effective in protecting the building.

 

And for our prep work and the damage to our plant, that’s pretty much it. So thank you. Good morning. I’m Tim Toporneck from Topponen in uniform in Toronto. Thank you to the TSA for inviting me, Joe and his team.

 

I’m happy to share my fire experiences. Here’s our top of linen fire on February 11th. This is what I arrived to. I was off the day before out of town with my general manager and CFO, and, all 3 of us arrived to this. I got a phone call at 5:15 in the morning from the fire department, and they had said that, one of your buildings is burning.

 

The building that was burning is this one right here. We’re an intercity plant. We have 4 properties and a half a block and close to the downtown core and this building was built approximately 18/50. So it was all wood and it, it it went up fast. Inside the, the building was all mats.

 

We are a Toronto based textile service company. We operate from 4 buildings. Our topper plant, we have 2 2 laundries on 1 one street. Our topper plant, 6 Merlot, processes linens and uniforms. Our solar building, which is next to it, is where we sold all of our products.

 

The map building, which is the fire building that rolls, stores, and builds roots for our facility services products, and the basement houses our parts department, our lockers, and washrooms, and showers for our staff. And our leader plant, which is next door to all this, is also another facility that only processes aprons, bar towels, kitchen towels, and mats. This is, this is the building burning. This this building is processes all the mats, bar towels, and aprons. There’s a building that’s burning, but we continue down the street with more buildings and processing in in the downtown core.

 

There was, 22 fire trucks. This is the chief of the fire department, they evacuated the neighborhood, they shut off all the gas, all the power, everything was removed, you can see the disaster that’s going on here, firemen are all with oxygen tanks and and, it was it was not pleasant. Here is, here they are inside, the roof is open, you can see that it’s completely burnt with the with the posts that are, you know, all melted and the mats that are all melted, so it was definitely a disaster. One thing about a fire is you’re not prepared for it, from a strategic point of view, you’re prepared for it, but from a shock point of view, you’re not prepared. From the presentations from these other gentlemen, when they have a snowstorm or hurricane, they know it’s coming.

 

We did not know this was coming. Everything is completely filled with smoke. You can’t even see. This is these this is days after the fire. The fire department remained on our property for 2 weeks, putting out fires and making sure that everything was there.

 

They had one fire truck on 24 hours. It’s a matte processing plant with our our bags of rag processing as well and tallboy laundry cart, you can see everything is all melted. There’s the mat rolling processing, it’s it’s just just devastation, absolute devastation. There’s mats getting ready to be low supposed to be loaded for our roots. Our our roots are loaded and ready to go.

 

We’re usually 2 days ahead in the mat department. There’s our parts department, part of our parts department that was completely caved in and along the wall, you can see iron shafts are in there and spare parts, we can’t even tell what’s in there. Washrooms, that is a washroom, shower is in there, they’re chartered beyond belief. Let’s go back to that last picture, again, more of the destruction within the, the basement of the building and that that’s a shower area. We got effects on our operations.

 

We lost our facility service operation including all floor mats, hand soaps, paper products, and new tablecloths and storage, so that all went up in flames. The basement housed our parts department as I mentioned, staff washrooms, lockers, change rooms. We have a 2 system delivery system for our roots. We have a bulk system on 24, 28 foot trucks, and we have the traditional step van design of roots. So, our our bulk roots are Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday with Wednesday off, and our bundles are Tuesday to Friday.

 

So we only operate our routes 4 days a week. Bulk trucks well loaded before the weekend for Monday, so we were very lucky when this fire happened on a Friday night. Saturday, we heard about it. We were ready to go and make deliveries on Monday because our trucks were loaded. Tuesday was a different story, but Monday, we were ready.

 

Bundle routes were all ready. Also, for the Tuesday route routes, our leader plant with our aprons, towels, and mats, and soil building took a heavy smoke damage, but zero fire damage. So the building was full of smoke, and, but we didn’t lose anything in the building. The top of building had fire doors on it which worked and closed properly and, we got inside that building and we are able to use washed linens and product to seal all the doors and we taped them and cardboard them as best we could to keep the smoke out of that building because we quickly realized that if we want to remain in business we had to keep the smoke out of that, of that facility. All power and gas have been shut off by the city officials for all operations immediately.

 

We spent the next 48 hours waiting for approval from the gas and electrical providers to turn everything back on with with gas. Once gas is turned off and you have a fire, you have to test each piece of equipment individually for any leaks. It takes a long time to get all that done, so you have absolutely no way of operating boilers, dryers, steam tunnels. We had lots of staff that came to the fire and saw what was happening that live in the neighborhood and we immediately started cleaning our buildings. We did have water, so we were fortunate that way.

 

Sunday, we were running on Sunday at 6 o’clock. The fire happened, Saturday, so we were very quick to get up and running, very, very quick. We get we began operating 1 plant around the clock but aprons and bar towels were processed by Canadian linen for 2 weeks, airmark food services now. And then after 21 straight days of work, we are able to return to our normal, working operations. Mark, I think you’re back up for lessons learned.

 

In terms of lessons learned and and there are a couple of things, that I forgot I think are important that we did to learn that that aren’t even up here is, I thought about them as, Mike was speaking here. Some of the logistical stuff in terms of transportation, I think one of the the real critical things there is that preparedness kit that that is on each truck. Making sure that the trucks have shovels and salt and chains and the various items they need in case they encounter a situation when they’re out there, because, you know, in a blizzard situation or a heavy snow situation, there are going to be opportunities to get stuck somewhere. And I think the the the last thing we learned from that storm in terms of transportation is we started double seating our trucks, where we would, in many cases, put an experienced driver with a maybe a less experienced driver. And we found that, we were more successful having 2 folks on the truck even if it wasn’t from a from a actually, help in getting there, but it made everybody feel more comfortable and safe, that there was 2 people on that truck.

 

If they got stuck and especially on our longer runs, having 2 people in that truck, if they got stuck in a situation, had to dig out, or they’re unsure of themselves, just having that that other person there was just a, a comfort for them, in dealing with that situation and ensuring that we got all of our deliveries to all of our customers. Preparedness. I think we learned. You know, the backup generation, I think we’ve all dealt with power issues. We have one site power generation having lived through trying to identify getting a generator in, securing that generator.

 

Invaluable having that permanently on-site. Some of the things and ways you can make that work is, participating in such things as a demand response program, help pay for that generator. You can enroll in these programs and you actually will get paid for coming off the grid in brown out situations, or emergency situations. You actually can even sell fuel back to electricity back to the grid. So there’s opportunities for, cost recovery in that area.

 

But having one side power, as simple as the working down the street from you and your power goes out, can be can be an emergency situation. Power is obviously so critical. You know, the plan advance having exercise I think you have to go through a situation to really be prepared, and that’s the that’s the unfortunate part is is I know, like, we talked about in in the hurricane down there is you can prepare like the storm was coming, but until that storm was upon you and you actually have to execute the specifics of your plan, you don’t really know if you’re prepared. You can always exercise, but when you’re asked to sprint, you’re asked to run that marathon, are you gonna complete it? You have to ask yourself that.

 

So I think you you have to be really honest with yourself about where your weaknesses are. I think we all know what our strengths are. It’s really our failure to identify where our weak points are as Mike said, securing fuel for your folks. One of the things we learned, in Sandy and stuff is we brought actually gasoline onto our site so folks could fill up their cars because the gas stations were either rationing fuel or or they didn’t have any fuel because their deliveries weren’t there. So that’s another avenue you can you can really protect yourself.

 

I think internally in our from in our facilities themselves, the cross chaining of employee in various areas. Obviously, we had stack that was essential in some areas which wasn’t there. So having folks that that understood the various roles in the organization and could quickly maneuver between roles was really critical for us. So looking at that cross training side. I think one of the other aspects is key essential and I think facility engineering is so critical during these situations is those folks all stayed on-site.

 

They actually didn’t even go to the hotel. Actually, we had cots and food and everything and those all folks stayed in our corporate offices and slept there as well as our leadership team. We all spent the night there at our facility throughout the storm. So I think you have to look at the top and what your leaders are doing because that’s where the example is set. It’s a cultural thing, I believe, more than anything else is, which What’s your Are you gonna take care of your customers?

 

I think we go into the mood that we have to think just like our hospitals. The hospital’s not gonna shut down in the storm. They’re gonna continue to operate. So we have to think the same way. I think that’s a cultural thing from later on down.

 

The advanced delivery, some of that that obviously is pretty common sense. We do that, you know, in any type situation, any snowstorm, but that communication tool, making sure your database is updated with, who the various contacts within a location are, because what you learn too is in that situation, many of the folks that you used to deal with, they aren’t there, they aren’t there. In many cases, you have to have that backdoor phone number or cell numbers to staff that’s actually staying there to coordinate deliveries with. And one of the more important numbers is understanding at each facility what is their snow removal process, who are they outsourcing that? Is it an internal thing?

 

Who do you need to get get in contact there in terms of transportation, logistics, one So, yeah, I I think in many cases, I think we need to exercise these plans. I think we need to get them out. I think we need to to do the fire drills, the the things that the things that we talk about, because if we don’t, we we won’t be prepared. And you honestly don’t learn these lessons until you live through 1, and you go back and and understand what you’ve been through. I think that’s us.

 

So thank you. For lessons learned for Unitex, number 1 is an emergency power plan is essential. So, you have 2 options, generator purchase or generator rental. We went with generator, rental for, this emergency. We have since purchased a generator and now have it stationed in our New Brunswick facilities, can be driven anywhere within our service area to, hook up to the majority of our plants.

 

Getting the plants generator ready was important. Almost all of our plants are now generator ready, so, we can drive the generator to virtually all of them and and keep them going. If you’re a single plant operator, you know, some of the considerations this wasn’t something that that affected us, but Michael wanted me to bring this up. For single plant operators, you have to consider, well, what are you gonna do if your one plant is completely out of power? Is there any other option that you have?

 

We have to set up some kind of partnership with other local laundry companies that maybe have power and then you don’t in order to get your work done. Thankfully, we had redundancy. We were able to shuttle our product to our other plants and get the, get the product completed, washed and and delivered to our customers. Regarding the idea of purchasing a generator, Michael also wanted me to bring up the point that since we purchased the generator, we have used it. In, Newberg, the power grid is not the in Newberg, New York, which is where one of our facilities is.

 

The power grid is in this, the the greatest, grid in the world, and we were out of power at the plant. Not a weather related emergency, just, some kind of power malfunction. We were out of power for numerous days. We drove the generator up immediately and, fired it up, and we’re able to keep the plant open and continue on, virtually the same service schedule that we had. Had we not had the generator and been able to do that, the costs involved with shuttling the product to other facilities, in terms of, fuel, overtime, you name it, would all have equaled what we paid for the generator.

 

So we’ve already covered the cost of the generator, since since purchasing it. Advanced deliveries, major cuts and shifting customers, those are pretty straightforward. The idea of, you know, working with your inventory specialists, your account managers to get a realistic assessment of what customers have on-site, how many of them will be able to make use of their reserve for the duration of whatever the emergency is, and what you can cut in advance, any major cuts that you can make across the board so that you can make it very clear what you’re gonna have to, produce to to meet your, service demands. The shifting of the customers. So I’ve mentioned before the idea of one of the problems that we had were 2, 2 trucks from different plants going to 1 facility or, one customer site.

 

So, what Rob talked to me about was the idea of, in the future, what he would have done differently, if we face this kind of emergency again. See if you can shift a customer entirely from if you have 2 plants entirely from one plant to another plant. That way, you’re not running into these 2 trucks going to the same facility from different from different plants. Just causes some logistics challenges. Contingency planning, evaluate more scenarios, as many scenarios as that, as you can.

 

That way, you know, you sit back and say, well, what if we’re out of power for 3 days? What if we’re out of power for 4 days? What if we’re out of power here and here? How are we gonna handle things? The more scenarios that you evaluate, you know, the better, your, proper the better you’ll be prepared when the emergency actually happens.

 

Obviously, you can only evaluate so many because you have limited time, but, you know, do your best to evaluate as many as possible. Constant communication. So, establish roles for who’s responsible for what. Those roles should already exist, You know, obviously, you have plant managers, maintenance managers, corporate engineers, regional managers, whatever the the, the breakdown is, the organization chart is for your your companies. But make sure that those roles are clearly established, you know, so that way, when your plan, which will have to be changed, more than likely, as soon as the plan begins to be executed, they’re gonna be changing conditions on the ground that demand that you be flexible.

 

You establish the roles very clearly early and make sure people understand their role in the plan. They’ll be able to adapt more easily when changes occur. Information sharing, that’s absolutely critical. So, ensuring that, what you learn as you’re producing things, customers, you know, opening, customers closing, who can get to work, who can’t get to work. Make sure all of that information is shared rapidly, throughout the throughout the company so that you can make adjustments as necessary.

 

Last, policies and procedures. So since this, we we probably had them in place, but I I don’t know how standardized they were. We we have standard, standardized emergency action plans for every one of our facilities. These action plans cover a host of different types of emergencies, blizzards, hurricanes, fires, active shooter, all sorts of different emergencies that plant, that a plant could could face, and it it establishes very clearly who’s responsible for what. So it it’s got, firm roles for all of the different positions.

 

We have that, documented available on our, you know, our company share drive, as well as, you know, printed out in the plants in the event that we have no power, we’ll be able to read it. And then the last is weather emergency process guides. We actually have a standardized weather emergency process. Basically, we experience a lot of snowstorms in the northeast. That’s the principal emergency that we face.

 

And, the emergency process guide actually establishes a clear planning process for alright. The storm is coming. We’re 2 days in advance, what do we need to figure out? You know, 3 days in advance, what do we need to figure out? It establishes the roles and what people are supposed to do, and then it it it, categorizes the best management practices based upon plant department.

 

What are your production best management practices is for handling snowstorms, your maintenance best practices, your service best practices, to give people an idea of how they should, go about planning in the event of an emergency. Alright. Next, Michael. Thank you. I would like to kinda switch topics a little bit and talk about something as a business owner that is probably maybe even more important both as planning and after the event, which is insurance, both insurance and liquidity.

 

Before the event, my CFO had been to multiple business interruption seminars, multiple disaster accounting seminars, because as soon as the event’s over, the first thing you need to start doing is figuring out what you’re spending. If you wanna get your insurance and you wanna be if you’re covered by insurance and you wanna get that refunded, then you need to have a excellent accounting of it. The other thing with insurance that was very interesting is we immediately began to fix our facility, clean up our facility, start contracting people to do what we could do to fix it, and that takes some liquidity. Sorry to say to all my all the supplier members here, but the first thing we started doing is we pay nobody except employees and absolutely essential suppliers. I personally got on the phone with most of our major suppliers and said, until I have an understanding of what’s going on, please be nice to me, but I am not paying anybody because I’m reserving all cash for the use of coverage.

 

When our adjuster, about a week and a half, two weeks after the storm showed up, he looked at us, He saw us all working, all functioning in the I mean, not we weren’t necessarily functioning complete, but we were working. We’re cleaning up. We were doing what we needed to do to make sure that the business continues. And he said, I have been to multiple sites, and that’s not what’s going on. They’re sitting around waiting for me to show up so that you you will give me some money so I can do it.

 

And he said, that’s not how insurance is supposed to work, but since you’re doing it right, here’s a $250,000 advance. And within 2 weeks, we had a $250,000 advance. And about 3 weeks later, he gave us another one. So having your insurance plan in place is key for long term recovery. I’m not gonna cover all of the things that are on there because a lot of people have already pretty much covered them.

 

We went through and we’ve decided to improve our communication plan basically using local radio stations and pre contracting with them the ability to get messages sent out because once again cell phone coverage was gone. We’ve talked about prearranged meeting times at the plant and things like that to the best of our ability. I just wanted to make a couple points about generators that were interesting. First of all, lots of people here talk about power out for a couple days here and there. Once again, as I mentioned, we had power out for 2 months.

 

Generators come in something called duty cycles, and you can buy a generator that’s designed to run for a couple hours a day or you can buy a generator with a diesel motor designed to run 247 at full power out. If you buy the wrong generator and you need power for a week, you may find out that your generator isn’t up to that standard. You need to talk about what duty cycle generator you’re buying. It’s absolutely key. The other thing with generator we found, we don’t need to run 247, the generator in our plant.

 

We weren’t trying to produce 247, But turning off the generator meant shutting down your entire server room, all of your computers, and then starting them back up again every day. That’s not fun. Your servers don’t like that. Your switches don’t like that. So we’ve decided that we’re buying a secondary smaller generator that will only supply our server and main electronics room so that when our main generator is down, that will kick in and run all our servers so we don’t need to shut them down.

 

And that generator for us is fairly big because you have to think about that server room needs to be cooled. And so it’s extensive air conditioning. It’s actually about a 65 kilosixty five, 70 kilo generator that we need to buy to do that. One of the things we learned is once again, diesel was totally unavailable. So we ended up taking chemical totes, sticking them in our trucks, and going to the main dispatchers of diesel on the island with cash and getting our own diesel.

 

And that was the way we were able to get up and running with enough diesel to operate. You can’t do that with gasoline. One of the things we’re thinking about is we need more gasoline on-site. And as many people mentioned, it’s not just because we need to get them for our trucks, but we also need to get them for our employees. Gasoline lines in the gas stations in Puerto Rico are running between 10 12 hours the first two weeks after the hurricane.

 

Many of these people mentioned it. They did hotel rooms. We didn’t do any of that, but we should have rearranged much more food on-site, much more water on-site. We should have given food, gasoline, and water to our employees. We started buying pallets of bottled water from Coca Cola and Pepsi to give to our employees because they were also having to spend water was being rationed, and you had to spend 3 or 4 hours online in a grocery store to buy a buy a case of water to get your employees into work.

 

We had to do that. And by the way, all that extra expense of giving your employees food, water, gasoline, it was covered by insurance. So those are pretty much some of the key points that I didn’t hear other people say. I don’t wanna keep you that long. Thank you very much.

 

Tim? Lessons learned. Lesson 1, a strategic plan. Build that personal relationship and could create a strategic plan with your competitors in case of disasters. It’s very important.

 

We all have fires and when they have theirs, be the first to offer your help with your competitors. Extra warehouse space within your neighborhood for short term rental is essential. Nobody wants to think about a fire but, knowing what you have in and around you that is available at any time is very, very important. So once a year look around, see what’s available, and also find out what it’s, renting for on a cost per square foot basis. Lesson 2, the insurance.

 

Have your building and or buildings appraised every 5 years and then update that yearly. Toronto is a big city. Real estate values are are very, very high, and acre land is $2,000,000 to $3,000,000, so having your buildings, up to date with the insurance and and then annually, updated was was was key for us. Do not have a global limit, but rather, have individual limits per building. So we’re a multiple building, 4 buildings.

 

It was more advantageous to have a individual building, appraised rather than all the buildings appraised. I don’t know if you have multi plant operations, if you’re inner city plants like I am, or multiple buildings, but, it’s important to have them all appraised individually. Make sure you have adequate extra expense coverage in your policy. Very, very important because there are limitations on the extra expense part of your policy, so read your policy very carefully. Be clear with your insurer.

 

Is it extra expense or business interruption? Insurance companies, will will often question you what is business interruption versus extra expense? So be clear and as I said earlier, read your policy and be very, very clear on that. Extra expense covers a much wider range of expenses. Our extra expense and business interruption continues to take continues today until we settle our claim.

 

Set up a separate GL for all your insurance costs. It makes it a lot easier when the insurance company comes in, have your CFO set that up for you so all costs related to your hurricane, fire, snowstorm is on a separate GL. Get full replacement on equipment and contents not used. People sometimes save some money. They feel they can, if they have a disaster, they can buy equipment on the used market.

 

We’ve never been big believers in that and we have full, replacement on equipment. So when you need something from a disaster, you get brand new stuff. Have a complete list of your equipment and contents. Things change in laundries very quickly, so it’s important to make sure you know exactly what you have in there, and then get replacement costs prepared annually. Once again, once you establish a list of your equipment that’s in your plant, just keep on updating it every year.

 

So when when our insurance comes due every July, so starting in June, we start to update our our list, and we had that done and it was it was very advantageous. Lesson 3, record keeping. Michael talked a little bit about this, but this is also very important. Your record keeping is essential to, prove to the insurance You have, records are vital to prove to the insurance. You have used qualified contractors for such things in electrical, gas, and plumbing work.

 

Avoid using your own staff unless they are licensed. So again, in the laundry business, we like to use our own staff for certain, things, you know, on the electrical side and the engineering side. I’m an engineer and I understand how this works and how things get run askew, but it’s important that you can prove to your insurance that all work that was done within your facility was done by a licensed contractor and that they’re qualified to do the job. Our fire was undetermined. We believe it was probably electrical, but they looked at all the aspects of our fire.

 

All items damaged and fired for replacement should be backed up by invoices in case items are destroyed beyond recognition. So your record keeping, again, is very, very important in this, information and keep this type of information off-site if you can. They are your identification period. Most insurance companies’ policy states that you’ll be covered for 12 months and and 12 months only. So you have to be careful of that.

 

Again, in your policy, if this is not enough and you have a major disaster such as a complete building and equipment replacement, as we did, 12 months is certainly not enough. New design, environmental, and building permits can take more than a year. The fire investigation. There’s 3 types of a fire investigation. The first one is accidental.

 

So insurance companies look for anything to mitigate against reclaimed money that they have paid out. So they’re looking to find out what caused this fire. They believe that in our washrooms, in our showers, that there was an electrical fan that had caused some grief here in the United States and caused some fires, and they were determined to take those fans, remove them, undershore our building, in the basement. The investigators went in, they pulled out those fans, they sent them to a lab, they had them tested, the fans all worked. So they couldn’t really find out what the cause was.

 

The second thing is intentional. They are seeking to prove an intentional act was committed for financial gain. In the process, they may require you to access your financial records. On Monday morning, the insurance company showed up and they asked me for my financial records. I said, why?

 

He said, we wanna make sure that you didn’t light the fire. Why were you not here with your CFO and your general manager? You were out on a ski vacation. I said, we are one day skiing, we’re very slow in the winter, and I’m not showing you my financial records, we’re a private company. You prove that I lit the fire, that’s a different situation, but we’re not prepared to show you anything right now.

 

And then, of course, there’s undetermined, which is what ours was. And undetermined is this is the worst case scenario for insurance company as they’re obligated to pay for all losses in full, and our case was undetermined. Fire safety equipment. Install sprinklers and test them yearly. Very important.

 

If you have laundry slings hanging, then you need 2 levels of sprinklers. Above and below the slings. Like one of my competitors, Canadian Linen, on Atomic Avenue had a fire. The slings were hanging, the sprinklers went off, the water couldn’t get to where the fire actually was because the the sprinklers were all blocked by the slings. So that was a lesson for them that they learned.

 

We only had one level of sprinklers. They didn’t go off in this particular building. It wasn’t a sprinkler, but we will be changing that. Use some, heat tracing devices in your plant to find out where the electrical hot spots are. Very, you know, also very important.

 

You want to know what’s what’s happening with your facility. Ensure all fire exits are clear with an exit light with an emergency lighting that is working. We have a tendency of not looking after some of these things and emergency lighting lighting is also very, very important. Public adjusters. Many public adjusters will approach you and your staff while the fire is still burning.

 

We have people coming to us and talking to our staff and saying, I’m from the insurance company and who’s the owner and, we wanna talk to them. But they weren’t our insurance company at all. They were they were public adjusters that were coming in immediately that wanted to, assist us with with the process. Appoint 1 person. Michael already mentioned this or Mark, I’m not sure.

 

But appoint 1 person to look after all of your disaster financial planning. The CFO or COO is the only person who can just discuss anything with our insurance company. So we appointed our CFO. I did. I said, you’re gonna look after all this.

 

We’re gonna move some of your work around and and get it done within, and and we’ll use some outside consultings from our financial side. And so his mandate has been to look after all the the the fire, the insurance, and, and and keep moving forward with it. So it was very important. You must have some savings. Again, somebody also mentioned this, Michael did, that you need some savings.

 

If you’re in business, you need a rainy day fund. Absolutely, you need a rainy day fund. You know, I grew up with a dad that started our company, and we always had money set aside for those emergencies. And an emergency is not buying a new washer or a new truck. That’s not an emergency.

 

Emergency is when you have a fire or you have a disaster and you need some money. So if you don’t have any money, the the insurance company is going to be, you know, very slow in giving you your checks. They give them to you very quickly in the beginning, but after a while, they will make it a little bit difficult for you, so you need to have some savings. Lesson number 9, media. If you have a major disaster, the media will arrive and and arrive in flocks.

 

They they come. They are all over us. There was cameras, news stations, there was a drone above our building. You saw some pictures of smoke there. Those are from drones.

 

They will hunt the owner down like a dog who hasn’t eaten in days. That was me. They wanted to find me. They wanted to find me. They kept on asking everybody, who’s the owner?

 

Where is he? We gotta talk to this guy. So be careful. Think carefully before you speak and could control all the questions you want to ask prior to going on camera. I was lucky that the chief fired, police chief was there, not police chief, fire chief was there and he was talking to the media on a regular basis and I knew they wanted to talk to me eventually, So he helped me greatly in, controlling the questions, and I talked to all of them at once and not one at a time.

 

As I said, only do one interview, get assistance from the fire department’s media expert prior to going live. This is a difficult time for the owner emotionally, so so lead your team, with the same energy as you drive them daily to excel in their careers. It’s it’s very difficult time. We’re an inner city plant. There was lots of people there watching this fire burn.

 

It’s, it was a very difficult time. Be positive. Remain calm. Thank all the fire and police personnel for their assistance. We sent, the police chief and the fire chief a letter thanking them for everything they did for us, And also remember all your customers and competitors are gonna watch you at the 6 o’clock news.

 

Your mom’s watching, your family’s watching, but your customers are watching you too. So, be very, very careful and your statement should be simple but effective and I, you know, we have lots of challenges at work, so I I really tried to remain positive. And I one of the statements that I made is we will soldier on, And then after 21 days, we took this picture and we sent it out on social media. So comments that I made was we will soldier on. And and we did and we were successful and many people came to our help.

 

I got warehouse space almost immediately from a friend of mine that had some space available. Another place where we have our trucks repaired, he had some some more warehouse space for us. We use that for mat processing and we’re shuttling things back and forth, but we’re we’re making out fine and we’re in the process of, of rebuilding. So there’s our old facility and we’re building the bottom picture is what we’re building in a new facility for us in in, in the linen and uniform business in in Toronto. Thank you.

 

Thank you for, sharing all the good information, various incidents that we’ve had. You have to have a plan, and you have to exercise the plan. Even when you have, you know, you have a little time to prepare or no time to prepare. I think you had a plan to get back into business. You gotta have a plan to take these things through.

 

And and you’re not ready till you have it, honestly. And I think that’s, you know, you don’t know what you don’t know. But I think having a plan is significant and exercising that plan. The other thing I heard pretty clear is exercising that plan. Gentlemen, thank you for your time.

 

Appreciate it. That presentation certainly underscored the importance of having a disaster preparedness plan in place at your linen, uniform, and facility services operation as disaster can strike at any given moment. If you want more information on disaster preparedness, visit TRSA’s website at www.trsa.org and search for the recommended professional practices for disaster planning booklet that TRSA developed with a crisis response expert. If you’re a health care operator, don’t forget to save the date for next year’s health care conference at the Hyatt Regency Mission Bay in San Diego, California. The 8th annual health care conference will be held on November 19th through 21st 2019.

 

For more information, visit www.trsa.org /healthcare. We’ll be back 2 weeks from now with another episode of the Linen Uniform and Facility Services podcast. Until then, don’t forget to subscribe, rate and review us on Apple Itunes, Google Play and Stitcher.