A scary fire

One of our banking customers had a huge fire. They need an instant response to salvage as much equipment as possible, so they could get back to work quickly and safely.

At 9pm one evening, a customer called our MD Rachel Houghton, saying a branch and back office had caught fire. They needed to salvage as much confidential information, furniture etc as possible, and relocate it to a safe place.

Rachel called Branch Director Terry Fox. Terry called his team. Within minutes, they were mobilised and haring down to the building – driving through the night to arrive on site first thing.

Within 12 hours of the call, we were working in a dark, damp building – smoky, no air con, and no running water. Worse: it was a boiling hot summer’s day – nice! We had to create a chain gang on the stairs to bring equipment out, catalogue each item, then take them to a nearby safe location. Rachel sourced provisions for the crew - water, toilet etc. We really needed both!

Within 24 hours, we’d safely re-housed all salvable items and confidential paperwork, and the crew were on their way home.

We were able to respond so quickly because of our Disaster Recovery planning. We’d co-created it with the customer and re-tested it each year. We had a plan for moving sensitive media and knew where we could recover items to. So when the fire started, we could act immediately.

But plans only work if you have the resources to act on them. And we have:

• We have dedicated Disaster Recovery teams on call-out standby
• Customers have direct access to Rachel 24/7
• We have our own resources, crews, vehicles and equipment to call on immediately
• We aren’t reliant on sub-contractors or hiring resources

We still speak fondly about this day! Yes, it wasn’t easy, pleasant or convenient. But we enjoyed the camaraderie amongst the crew. When we heard about the fire, we jumped on it immediately, rolled our sleeves up, and made it work for the customer - under challenging circumstances.