Business Continuity Disaster Recovery COOP Crisis Management John Glenn CRP MBCI
Friday quickie
Event elsewhere
interrupts my operation
John Glenn, MBCI
Certified Business Continuity Planner
Let me hasten to add that when this scrivener writes "terrorists" I include both the foreign variety and the home-grown variety.
On Thursday, September 21, 2006, there was an underground "explosion" so powerful that it sent manhole ("maintenance hole" to be "pc") covers in downtown Philadelphia PA flying into the air. There were reports of a 30-foot high flame shooting from underneath the street.
One person was reported injured, but the news articles I read failed to link the injury to the blast.
For a Business Continuity planner, there are a number of lessons to be learned from the blast.
Not "my" event
The explosion was in the street. It was, according to the reports, strong enough to shake nearby buildings.
Among the nearby buildings were several high rise office buildings - no skyscrapers like the World Trade Centers, but 30 floors or more.
By all accounts, only a few offices within the area bothered to evacuate the staff and visitors despite hearing a blast or feeling the building shake - or both. Some people reported feeling that a new "9-11" was happening, but still there apparently was no evacuation order by building managers.
When I worked in a 14 floor building in Charleston WV, I grew to expect building management to control fire drills and, by extension, other "building wide" alerts. Charleston is in "Chemical Valley" and the alerts could easily be orders to stay inside.
The bottom line was that we depended on the building managers - and security staff - to tell us when to go and when to stay "in the event of . . ."
In Philadelphia there apparently was no one with the responsibility to recommend evacuation or, based on news reports, anyone to say "not to worry; everything is under control."
Fortunately, the electrical fire which prompted the explosion was confined underground.
Some people were forced to evacuate their buildings due to lack of commercial power; the fire knocked out AC to several buildings.
Once outside, people were milling about rather than leaving the "impact zone."
Which would have been a good thing to do.
Streets closed
- Preparing for events which are outside their domains.
- Coordinating their plans with building management and other building tenants.
- Including local Emergency Management organizations when developing the plan.
- Depending on the location, checking with municipal planners to determine where utility services are located; in some places, that includes not only telephone and electric, but water, gas, and steam as well. A break in any fluid line can immediately ruin a planner's day. In the Philadelphia event, the problem was traced back to electric lines.
One news report claimed that the police blocked surface traffic over a 36-square block area; for those who know Philadelphia, the cordoned off area ran from 13th Street to 18th Street and from Vine to Walnut (see map).
Subways were running, but all "non-essential" surface traffic was frozen. "Essential" in Thursday's incident included fire, police, the electric company, and possibly the gas company.
The "bottom line" for a number of city center businesses was that they were out of business for the duration.
For Business Continuity planners the lessons include:
According to KWY TV's Michelle Durham, "Peco (the local electric vendor) spokesperson Mike Wood said an underground cable fault problem that started Thursday morning became more complicated by a mistake.
"There were three customers all of which will served by two distinct underground feeds. one of which failed. One of the customers tried switch over to the second feed, and when they did they wound up switching all of their electrical load for that building into the defective cable instead of the good one."
The resulting explosion and fire caused massive evacuations and detoured inbound SEPTA bus routes for several hours, the TV reporter said.
I'm guessing that the "two distinct underground feeds" came from the same vendor (Peco) and from the same source, versus having power from different vendors.
Having multiple vendors, however, would not have saved the day. If the TV reporter's story is accurate, the real problem was "pilot error"; someone "tried (to) switch over to the second feed, and when they did, they wound up switching all of their electrical load for that building into the defective cable instead of the good one."
Having "two distinct underground feeds" probably would give almost anyone a level of confidence in the commercial power. Unfortunately for two of the customers on those feeds, they failed to anticipate Murphy's Law and the third company bringing everyone down (as well as causing a fire under the street and, when gasses built up, blowing a manhole cover high into the air). Manhole covers typically weigh more than 100 pounds (55 kilo).
Fortunately, all the damage was confined underground. Responders removed covers elsewhere along the conduit to prevent additional gas build-up and additional explosions.
From a Business Continuity perspective, the impact of the event should have been predicted - loss of power = loss of productivity = loss of revenue + salary sans Return on Investment (ROI). The incident happened in the afternoon; most users had power restored by the next morning. (Unless an organization operates 24*7, relocation would be counter-productive.)
The moral of the story is "Know your neighbors - and communicate with them." If the neighbor who tried to fix the problem has communicated with the neighbors, the event might - just might - have been avoided or, worst case, the other tenants could have ridden down in the elevator rather than going down many flights of stairs in semi-darkness.
"It is far better to foresee even without certainty than not to foresee at all." Henri Poincare, French mathematician, one of the greatest mathematicians and mathematical physicists at the end of 19th century.
John Glenn, MBCI, has been helping organizations of all types avoid or mitigate risks to their operations since 1994. Comments about this article, or others at http://JohnGlennMBCI.com/ may be sent to Planner @ JohnGlennMBCI. com.
