A joint effort of Colliers International and Fisher Communications, yesterday's symposium at Fisher Plaza began with moderator and local television personality, Ken Schram, asking, "What do we do if the world starts falling down?" For the next few hours a high-level group of panelists did their best to answer that question.

Doug Barrett and Stephen Rothrock, brokers with Colliers/Seattle and leasing agents for Fisher Plaza (at 140 Fourth Ave. N.), tell GlobeSt the genesis of the executive forum was the number of real estate clients taking magnifying glasses to their disaster recovery plans and asking about the survivability of Seattle real estate.

In his portion of the presentation, Glen L. Woodbury, director of Washington's Emergency Management Division, divided disaster recovery in three components: facilities, operations, personnel. Would your facility survive? Yes or no, could you continue to operate? And, finally, do you have a plan in place that would allow your personnel to run those operations—especially if they had to be managed remotely?