Businesses in Cascadia - CREW

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Roundtable DiscussionOWNING VS. LEASING THE BUILDINGDoes your company own or lease its office buildings and facilities?Many businesses, such as Degenkolb, Puget Sound Energy, and CleanScapes, lease thebuildings in which their offices are located. Others, such as Foss Marine, own the buildings.For those that lease, the decisions of the owners usually determine how well the building isprepared structurally for an earthquake, as well as how quickly businesses are likely toreoccupy the structure (if at all) after the event.It was noted, however, that in the Chilean earthquake in 2010, it was nonstructural internaldamage that seriously affected many businesses, regardless of whether they leased or ownedtheir buildings.MULTIPLE BUSINESS LOCATIONS AND BACKUP FACILITIESDoes your company maintain backup facilities?Foss Marine has offices all over the west coast. Our business model assumes that we will losethe use of our buildings in the disaster area (e.g., in a Seattle fault earthquake scenario), butour boats will still operate. We can also bring in additional boats and crews from Portland oreven California if needed. The administrative center will be shifted to our Portland office.Puget Sound Energy maintains backup command centers in Bellevue and Redmond. Whenthese locations were chosen, the company was focused on single-risk scenarios, such as a fireat one of the centers. We now recognize that to address a large-scale regional risk, we need topush for a third backup facility located out of the area. These backup control centers areextremely expensive.Boeing Employees Credit Union (BECU): As part of our structure for business resiliency, wehave a fully built-up center in Spokane as well as the ability to run our data center from there.We also have a backup facility in Everett for non-regional events, but if something like a bigSeattle fault earthquake occurs, we can switch to the Spokane center.ISSUES RELATED TO SERVING AS A FIRST RESPONDERFoss Marine has been working with the U.S. Coast Guard and participating in their plan torestore commerce and marine trades after an event. This includes prioritizing cargo andstarting to bring it in after an earthquake. Precisely where the cargo will be brought will haveto be determined after the event. We run very large steel boats with hulls that can pushthrough any debris floating in the water. Our normal operations assume our boats willencounter some debris (e.g., floating logs) on an everyday basis, so we are equipped to dealwith any difficulties or damage. We expect to get our orders from the Coast Guard; the Coast24 | CREW Business Roundtables
Guard will interface with other entities and jurisdictional authorities. Nevertheless, it seemslikely that in the hours immediately following an event, the lines of jurisdictional authoritywill not be entirely clear. This could pose challenges, as local sheriffs and other authoritiesmay order us to do things for them.APM Terminals: The U.S. Coast Guard assumes it will be the lead authority in maritime-basedPuget Sound and that it will manage the response. The Coast Guard has done somegroundwork to establish connectivity to other entities.HOW PREPARED ARE THE COMPANY’S EMPLOYEES?Do the businesses here have a plan or program to support employees’ preparedness?Foss Marine: The first hour after the disaster will likely be spent working things outindividually and trying to discover what is going on. The second hour will be spent figuringout what the corporation’s actions are going to be. We haven’t exercised for a catastrophicloss.APM Terminals: The key first step is to make sure the company’s employees are prepared athome: The employees need to know that their families are safe and able to ride it out. Mostbig corporations do provide information about disaster preparedness. APM Terminals, whichis global, maintains a website, providing online resources that employees and their familiescan access. If a company’s HR department has disaster-specific policies, the company is morelikely to have conversations with its employees about personal preparedness. Most of APMTerminals’ employees live in Puget Sound’s seismic bad zone. Those that don’t might stillhave trouble reporting to work after an earthquake. The problem with most corporations isthat they focus their attention on the functionality of their administrative centers; they need tolook at training their people—where are your people and how can you help get them get backin business locally?CleanScapes is currently working with a contractor on preparing employees’ families.CleanScapes also has a website that employees and their families can access. This is locatedout of state, but updated instate. (Pricilla Armstrong also plans to get in touch with their SanFrancisco office to see about serving as out-of-area support.)Puget Sound Energy has looked to hurricane-ravaged states for models. After a disaster,corporations need to change their focus briefly and work on helping employees and theirfamilies meet their basic needs following the event. This allows employees to focus on theirjobs. PSE has adopted this strategy.When developing response plans, companies should also identify in advance whichemployees will be needed at what stage of the response and recovery. There will be apercentage that can be sent home and will therefore be free to focus on the needs of theirfamilies.Seattle, Washington | 25
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Page 9 and 10: Businesses that occupy buildings co
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Page 13 and 14: INTERDEPENDENCIESAll of the discuss
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Page 31 and 32: PLANNING FOR THE RESPONSE: OVERALL
Page 33 and 34: For businesses not involved in the
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Page 43 and 44: K-12 who have experienced ShakeOut
Page 45 and 46: (Note, for example, California’s

Businesses in Cascadia - CREW

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