Disaster Planning Requires Improvisation

NEW YORK CITY-Building owners and major tenants have been rethinking contingency and disaster recovery plans since Sept. 11, broadening the scope of possible calamities for which they need to be prepared. At this morning’s Newmark & Co. Real Estate Inc. security seminar, panelists agreed that disaster planning is crucial, but added that employees’ abilities to improvise on existing plans is equally important when facing a workplace emergency.

Salomon Smith Barney director of general services Thomas Moogan told an SRO crowd at the Roosevelt Hotel that as one of the World Trade Center’s biggest tenants, his firm’s crisis management operations needed to be in top form when the twin towers fell. But no previous plans imagined a disaster as horrific as the trade center bombings. Improvisation, he said, kept nearly all his firm’s Downtown employees safe that day.

“A lot of people did the right thing that day,” he said. “Some called their families and went home. Others stayed. There was no right or wrong.” Among those who opted to stay Downtown and help with the evacuation were “people who could do well in a crisis. We have tagged them for further growth and further responsibility.”