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Fire
at ASC
WE'RE BACK! Go straight to the latest update... At
about 9:30 on Saturday morning July 29, 2006, a maintenance supervisor
working on a landscaping project in front of the building which houses
ASC's offices noticed something peculiar as he glanced up toward the
second floor windows. Moments later one of the windows shattered and
he could see that the building was on fire. He called 911 and by 9:40
the first firefighters were on the scene.
Not long after, IT personnel, using a wireless laptop, were able to access ASC's offsite web server and re-establish our websites.
Some five hours later, at about 3:30 pm, fire officials declared the building to be somewhat stable and allowed very limited access to tenants. A team of 11 ASC employees entered the suite and began rescuing equipment. They braved temperatures well over 120 degrees (it was almost 90 degrees on Saturday), darkness (power had been cut off), smoke, soot, broken glass, and stress (building officials determined there was significant damage to the structure and advised the everyone evacuate as soon as possible). During their brief time inside, they dismantled the entire server room (10 large computers), grabbed up more than 20 laptops and other PCs, and secured other equipment and data. The building was then locked and remained guarded while officials investigated the origin of the fire. Since the fires origin was
below ASC's suite, the offices did not sustain any water damage. However,
it was said that the fire flashed to more than 1200 degrees during
its peak, and it was fortunate that all the servers were still intact
and operable. While the team was rescuing equipment and securing the
premises, other personnel found temporary office space, namely three
suites in a nearby extended residence hotel about a quarter mile from
ASC.
ASC IT personnel worked throughout the night to set up and monitor the remaining servers. They battled exhaustion, as well as the limited bandwidth and power resources of the hotel. They were also faced with the daunting task of turning the suites into a makeshift office for employees come Monday morning. Meanwhile, ASC officials were already looking into both short-term and long-term office space alternatives, in case the damaged building remained unusable for an extended period of time.
On Sunday morning, July 30, building officials allowed tenants to reenter their suites for a brief time. Power had been restored and more peripheral equipment and personal items were removed. Another security check on all hard and soft data was performed as well. All ASC clients were contacted by e-mail by 11:00 am and told of our predicament. IT personnel continued to re-establish services, and by late afternoon almost all of ASC capabilities were back on line, albeit in a limited capacity, less than 36 hours after the fire was first reported. These services included e-mail, and web access to e-mail, all ASC websites, CustomerFirst and SalesFirst (our client contact systems, including web access to each), PowerSeller development and QA, PowerLender Development & QA, our general operation database and related servers. By 8:00 am on Monday, July
31, ASC will be open for business as usual. Please excuse us if you
experience any interruption in your support services. The second factor was that ASC had a disaster recovery plan in place and it played a vital role in the quick recovery. Approximately two years ago, ASC underwent an SAS-70 audit. It isn't required, and not many companies have gone through it. The recent hurricane disasters in the Gulf Region have brought a little more attention to it, but ASC had the foresight to have it and practice it. Off-site data storage, redundant servers, a secured and monitored server room, and detailed recovery plans were just a few of the practices that helped in our speedy recovery. IT personnel, upon being notified of the fire, were able to visually monitor the offices via remote video cameras. Even before we arrived inside the suite, the remote temperature monitors told us that the sensitive servers did not suffer excessive exposure to heat, and, as we later learned, temperature and smoke sensors in our alarm system indicated fire just about the time it was discovered. It was determined that the fire began approximately 7:00 am Saturday morning. Our last hot backup to the offsite servers in Florida was completed a little after 7:30 on Friday night. We cannot stress enough the
importance of this plan to ASC's well being. Monday morning is obvious
proof of this. The last factor is our valued customers. The only concern we had this weekend was the hope that we can deliver the same quality of service to you as you have come to expect from us. We thank you for your understanding and patience. We will continue to provide further information as soon as possible. Upon being informed that her Dads business had caught fire and was damaged, 11-year old Kate Liston, daughter of ASC president Tim Liston, wrote the following in an e-mail to console him: Hi daddy it's katie i am sorry about the building. If you have a fundraiser i'll sell raffle tickets!!:) Timeline Saturday, July 29, 2006 9:30
am--Fire reported in ASC's office building. Sunday July 30, 2006 3:00
am--Mission-critical components such as e-mail and customer contact
capabilities restored.
Monday, July 31, 2006 ASC opens for business as usual. Core ASC personnel report to hotel suites to begin work. Schedules and personnel rotations are created. Many ASC folks work from home as well. This practice was established a while ago for two reasons. To study the feasibility of telecommuting at ASC and, in part, to put in play some of our disaster/backup plan. This idea has been a great success at ASC, especially with programmers, and QA people. This has saved ASC and environmental resources, as well as improved morale. ASC has been very active in experimenting with a virtual office scenario for portions of its workforce. The
removal of supplies and equipment continues at the damages ASC site
as limited access is granted. Wireless bandwidth is discovered to fluctuate with the ascending and descending of a nearby elevator. Larger antennae quickly remedy the problem. Tuesday, August 1, 2006
Another day at the office. ASC handles support calls, programming issues and sales follow-up calls as it typically would on any other day. More insurance and landlord fun follows as the details are being sorted out. ASC persons not directly involved in fire recovery should also be commended for making the best of the situation. Working on beds and card tables while taking support calls isn't easy, especially when there are five persons in a standard hotel room. IT continues its outstanding job providing more services and access to necessary databases. Office sites are visited and evaluated on technical, cost, size, and geographic criteria. Wednesday, August 2, 2006 Life gets better all the time at ASC South. The routines are setting in and things run much more smoothly. A team investigates area training facilities in order to remain on promised schedules. The sales team continues their prospecting efforts in spite of the cramped conditions. A scheduled web demo goes on as planned, with the demo driver at home and the sales rep at the hotel. IT
staff maintains their round-the-clock vigil over a makeshift network/data
infrastructure. This is the fifth day of temperatures well above 90
degrees, record power-use levels, and rolling blackouts. Below
are a few examples:
Thursday, August 3, 2006
Every
piece of electronic equipment we own will be cleaned unless it was
not in the building at the time of the fire or we deem it not worth
cleaning and decide to just replace it. That means every PC, server,
laptop, printer, copier, phone, PBX cabinet, monitor, firewall, router,
LAN switch, projector, etc., will be tagged with a bar code, cleaned
either in the mobile lab or back at their cleaning facility and either
returned to us for immediate use or stored in a climate controlled
facility until it is needed. Friday, August 4, 2006 ASC holds its first full staff meeting since the fire. Policies and procedures for working in our temporary space are reviewed. Options for the future are presented. Tim implores all of us to remain on task, and promises things will get better. More potential office sites are visited. Sales performs a web demonstrations as scheduled. It goes very well. A small group of ASC employees, working in half-hour increments, spent the majority of the day Friday removing the remaining electronic and other items from the damaged office suite. In all, they removed approximately 350-400 pieces of equipment, including all phones, laser printers and even the copier. It was cataloged and tagged by the cleaning service and then loaded onto a truck. They began about 9:00 am and finished loading about 8:00 pm. Most of this will be cleaned and stored until it is needed.
Saturday, August 5, 2006 Electronic cleaning continues, as IT personnel swap out servers and rely on backups. Most of the equipment at the hotel has been cleaned including several of core servers. Most laptops and workstations are cleaned and back in their respective rooms. This includes developer PCs for use at home. By Sunday, items such as our laser printer, portable projector, and monitors should be complete. Sunday, August 6, 2006 All items in the hotel, including many individual PCs are now clean and will be returned. The mobile lab will remain on site to clean the few remaining items which are being brought in on Monday. Monday, August 7, 2006 The electronic restoration service has cleaned, wrapped and stored about half of the hardware that was removed on Friday. They expect to be done by the end of a week from Friday. Of all the equipment that was rescued from the damages suite so far, only two known problems surfaced, and they were easily remedied. The only question which remains of the hardware is how the fire affected the life expectancy of each piece. But, so far, so good. An additional PC station was setup for the sales department. A direct mailing to prospects, planned before the fire, will go out within the week. Marketing plans for the upcoming MBA National Convention are continuing. ASC technical people are booking flights to travel to clients sites. Tuesday, August 8, 2006 No word on our future office space plans, but Tim has been hard at work looking for an appropriate site while dealing with insurance and tenant issues. Some things we do now know. We will be in some form of temporary space for at least six months. In review of ASC's complex business insurance policies, it was determined that ASC's coverage in all aspects was ample. This was and remains an important factor in maintaining the high level of customer services that are delivered.
Wednesday, August 9, 2006 Life continues as best it can at ASC South. We would like to take this time to thank all our clients, vendors and friends for all their well-wishes, gifts, and words of encouragement. We are truly fortunate to be involved with such kind and caring people, thank you. Schedules are determined so that ASC personnel can return to the damage suite to retrieve any personal effects prior to the arrival of the clean-up service. More capabilities become available to us each day, allowing us to move a little closer to operational normalcy. Thursday, August 10, 2006 Sharing a cellphone...sharing a single printer...sharing a room with six people...having to knock or call to be let in...hearing someone else's ringtone, over and over again, in your sleep...assigned bathrooms...working on beds, coffee tables, TV trays and nightstands...really, really, REALLY getting to know your co-workers! It might just be too much to bear for most folks...but not us! As a way to let off a little steam, we had a cookout! Chicken, burgers, dogs, veggies, and salads, and Uncle Tim did the grillin' while we did the chillin'!
Monday, August 14, 2006 After a relatively uneventful Friday and weekend, we received some good news on Monday. At about 10:00 it was announced that ASC had secured a new temporary office space! ASC's new home for the next six months will be in Plaza South Two, right next door to our old office. The office contains about 9,500 square feet of space, 70 furnished and wired cubicles, a conference room, kitchen, server room and four small offices. By noon, a crew was busy at work, moving, cleaning and preparing the new office. Shortly thereafter, the entire 'ASC South' hotel headquarters was shut down, dismantled, and moved. The IT staff worked long into the night re-establishing the servers, connecting cubicles and generally doing everything to get us up and running the next day. Tuesday, August 15, 2006 About 25 ASC employees reported for work on Tuesday morning at the new office space. By the time they arrived, most of the servers were running and connection to assigned cubicles were made. Those with laptops and cleaned PCs hooked up and went to work. Most of the web services were up and running by 3:00 pm. This included all of our web sites, Wiki, Internet E-mail, Web Mail, and FTP sites. We
received our phone system and most remaining servers, PCs monitors
and related equipment back from the cleaning service beginning at about
4:00 pm.
Welcome to ASC
Wednesday, August 16, 2006 More workers arrive at ASC and return to a regular environment. Our server rack returns and quickly gets filled with sweet smelling servers who just had a bath and week's vacation. It is not known whether ASC personnel received the same treatment! LOL! Nearly everyone has a PC with which to work. Thursday, August 17, 2006 Another
delivery of cleaned electronics is scheduled for delivery later this
afternoon. We hope to get back all the remaining PCs and some miscellaneous
equipment. Coffee makers arrive as does a brand new refrigerator! Life is...getting better anyway! Friday, August 18, 2006 A professional cleaning service will begin packing up our belongings in our damaged office on Monday for cleaning. Everything must go in order for repairs and rebuilding to proceed. Everything not designated for cleaning will be thrown out. All records are being sealed, cleaned and stored. Individuals stare in amazement at how much stuff they accumulated in a single office or cubicle over a career. Mugs, paper clips, photos, children's artwork, post-it notes, receipts, loose change, CDs, diskettes, files, folders, papers, papers, and more papers. Our collective guess is that cubicles and offices in the new space will remain quite Spartan. Monday, August 21, 2006 We arrive this Monday with a renewed crease in our pants as casual dress days come to an end. This gesture symbolizes the we are truly back on our feet and are ready to make up for lost time. The alarm system in our new suite is installed. Everyone awaits the arrival of the phone system! The cleaning service arrived and will begin clearing out items from the suite. Their job is mainly to separate items to be cleaned, claimed for insurance or tossed out. No less than eight individuals will work through the week on this task. Tuesday, August 22, 2006 Limited phone service is restored along with some of our printers. The security system in the new suite is being reprogrammed, and is ready for use. Wednesday, August 23, 2006 The phone system is restored in full, including outgoing long distance and voicemail. The internal security systems are being restored as well, so we're essentially as secure as we were the day of the fire. Thursday, August 24, 2006 A core group of ASC employees has had the ongoing task of sorting, tagging, and removing items from the old office. As the cleaning service brought forth items for consideration, the ASC folks had to coordinate their removal. As you can see from the photos, this has been an overwhelming endeavor. At the end of the day Thursday, ASC is void of all work contents. Crews began dismantling cubicles and removing all the furniture.
Friday, August 25, 2006 Almost four weeks after the fire, ASC's suite is empty and ready for a complete teardown. All interior walls, wall coverings, ceiling tiles, overhead wiring and floor coverings will be removed. This process is nearly complete on the floor above us and the floor below us where the fire originated. Tuesday, September 19, 2006 A brief update on the goings-on at ASC, chiefly security. We have made great stride in securing our new premises. For example, our suite is now equipped with an keyless entry system to control access during business hours. For off hours, we have installed an alarm system complete with web-cameras and a smoke and fire detection system. We have monitoring systems in place to track all traffic in and out of the premises. Our wiring, telephone and Internet closet is secured with a secondary alarm. We ordered modular walls and a door to secure the server room. This is due to be delivered this week. Friday, September 29, 2006 Demolition continues on our old building, but there is hope, as seen in this image, that things are looking up for ASC!.
April - July 2007 Work resumes on Plaza South One after a Winter hiatus. Crews begin by removing windows and storing them onsite. Next massive moveable scaffolding is installed. Within weeks, crews begin removing the brick facade from the building. Within a few short months, all four sides have been stripped and re-bricked. By early July, the windows have been reinstalled. Work on the interior contiuned throughout this time. A temporary concrete mixing operation was constructed in the back parking lot so that structural repairs could be made. Rough plans have been reviewed by ASC for revamping our old office footprint to make better use of space. Below are a series of images from the process described above. In mid-June, ASC was invited inside to see the progress (or lack thereof) on our old office. Images of this visit are included as well.
Monday, July 30, 2007 - ONE YEAR LATER We noted the passing of one year since the fire which displaced us from our offices. It's been very quiet the past 9 months or so, but looking back to last August, it was pretty crazy! Below is a recent photo of the building. As you can see, the exteior work has been essentially completed. Build-out of actual office spaces will begin soon.
September 12, 2007 Renovation is nearing completion on our suite. The majority of the walls are in place and the entire office has been primed for paint. The floor is ready for carpet as well. Dave & Joe have been busy removing the many generations of old PC wiring, and are preparing the area for new cable. No definative word on when we're moving, but our suite is getting closer to being done! ~More to come.
December 2007 As we prepare for an early January move-in date, our suite is progressing nicely. But will it be done in time?
ASC resumes operation in our offices, following 18 months in a temporary location following the fire. Although it's still noisy, dusty and full of boxes, we're back home where we belong. Here are some photos from the first few days.
We would like to thank all of our clients for their patience and understanding throughout the past 18 months. We worked hard to maintain our high level of customer service during our 'crisis'. We are also thankful to our employess and especially to ASC Management for providing support and leadership through it all. It is amazing, but not surprising, how this incident exposed the character and dedication of the ASC family. We have high expectations for this year, and we wish you all a prosperous 2008 as well. |
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