The Spirit of the Trailer: Gillis, Ellis & Baker's Katrina Story The following article was written by Agility member Douglass C. Mills, CPCU, for The National Alliance for Insurance Education & Research. It also appeared in the Nov. 2006 edition of Rough Notes Magazine.

For Gillis, Ellis & Baker 2005 began well. A 73 year old, third generation agency in downtown New Orleans. The 37 employees were settled into their newly expanded and renovated office on the 6th floor of a 26 story office building directly across Poydras Street from the Superdome. The office was fresh and stylish, the furniture and workstations brand new and everyone found the new surroundings to their liking. GEB was also coming off of their biggest production year ever - 2004 had taken them to new heights for new business revenue and the sales goal for 2005 had them exceeding the record. But something was missing.

In addition to sales records, 2004 had delivered four hurricanes to Florida, including powerful Ivan which passed too close to New Orleans for comfort. The management team at GEB - Anderson Baker (President), Parke Ellis (Executive Vice President) and Doug Mills (VP/C.O.O.) - realized they had a problem. Upon further review, the agency's disaster recovery plan was deemed to be inadequate to properly respond to a hurricane or other catastrophic event and that had to quickly change.

Story after story told of hardships and struggles by agencies in Florida following the four storms. The GEB management team faced the reality that if a storm (or other disaster) struck their office they were ill prepared to respond. Their families, the 37 employees and their families and their 3000+ customers were depending on the agency's ability to withstand a disaster, rebound quickly and be there for them. The agency had to be up and running after a disaster - no matter what.

Building The Plan

I was tasked with the role of disaster plan coordinator for the agency. I was to re-build the plan and assure that the agency could quickly and efficiently respond to any disaster that befell the agency. Hurricanes were our primary concern, but the plan should be able to respond in other emergency situations as well.

Some key questions that I had to answer (as does anyone preparing a disaster recovery plan for an insurance agency):

• Where will we go if we can’t occupy our office?
• What will we have to work with when we get there – understanding that we would have to replicate almost every function in our office?
• How will we communicate with staff, clients and companies?

In attempting to answer these questions it quickly became apparent that without the "assets" required to put a plan into action the plan itself was useless. By assets I mean actual office space, computers (servers and workstations), telephones, internet access and all of the other things required to run a 21st century insurance agency. Add to this the necessity that all of the assets had to be available at a moment's notice and assembled in as short a time as possible (48-72 hours). With this realization, the effort switched from pure planning to acquisition of assets or the means to acquire assets when necessary.

The main ingredient to our plan was a backup office facility and the tools necessary to run the office including our entire IT infrastructure. Through the Big I of Louisiana we were put in touch with Agility Recovery Solutions, and from my very first conversation I knew they were the answer. Agility offers to provide the following items to you (or some combination of items as the situation dictates) all within 48 hours of declaring an emergency:

• An air conditioned mobile office unit with (in our case) 20 workstations with desktop computer, phone and desk/chair
• Servers to replicate the capabilities in your office
• Satellite phone service
• Satellite high speed internet service
• Technical support to begin and maintain operation of the mobile office

The cost is modest (about $250 a month for the service) with the understanding that Agility will bill you their actual costs for services/equipment provided.

An added and valuable feature to membership with Agility is the Disaster Planning Guide they have you complete. Part of the guide enables Agility to replicate your office IT infrastructure in the mobile unit. It also allows for quick replacement of IT hardware if that is your "disaster". The other part of the guide has you answer many of the questions you would/could be faced with if a disaster strikes. While not a true "how-to" in disaster recovery, the guide does force you to address many issues before the disaster, and develop answers or solutions. This would serve us well come August 29, 2005 and beyond.

In discussing disaster recovery with Florida agents, the same question kept coming up - How do you handle the high volume of calls that surely follow a hurricane or other large disaster? In addition - How do you handle these calls while setting up a new office or re-establishing your current office and all while giving your clients the peace of mind that the agency is there and ready to help?

Our solution was Artizan Internet Services, the providers of CSR 24 and Service 911. In our case, Service 911 was what we needed. The key elements of the service are as follows:

• A weekly back up of your client data management system (AMS in our case) so that Artizan has the same client data as your in-house CSRs
• Trained CSRs to answer calls and either handle the client's request or take a message and email a message to you for follow up
• Can be "turned on" for short periods of time or kept in service for a prolonged period to aid in recovery of the office
• Creates the appearance of "seamless service" to your clients. They are able to reach a CSR for help who has access to all of the client's policy information and the client has the piece of mind of knowing that their agent is there to help them
• Artizan has a set up charge of about $1,500 and a monthly fee of $167 which includes data backup. A per minute charge is applied for calls once an emergency is declared.

With most of the key questions answered by Agility and Artizan, GEB entered into contracts with both companies in the summer of 2005. We began work on the Agility Disaster Planning Guide and made arrangements for training for our IT manager, but before all of this could be completed, fate intervened and the planned for became our reality.

No Matter What

Despite the fact that we along the Gulf Coast watch hurricanes and their movements very closely - Katrina sort of snuck up on us. As late as Friday August 26th, the weather service had Katrina coming ashore east of Panama City, Fla. as a Category 2 storm. We were watching her movement, but not overly concerned. Here is a brief timeline of the events leading up to landfall on Monday August 29th and the days immediately following.

By late afternoon on the Friday August 26th, the path of the storm was moved westward (towards New Orleans) and Katrina was gaining strength.

• No one was overly alarmed. The Saints played a pre-season game in the Superdome that night, and my partner went off to a fishing camp south of New Orleans with a Colonel in the Louisiana National Guard.
• By Saturday (27th) the storm had gained strength and predictions talked of a Category 5 storm. The preparation pace quickened. My partner canceled his day of fishing when the Colonel was picked up by helicopter and flown back to the city. My wife and I put her 83 year old parents on a plane to Dallas to stay with my sister-in-law. As evacuation loomed, we knew they could not stand the stress of days on the road and the uncertainty it brings.
• On Saturday morning I went to the office to retrieve some documents and touch base with Agility and Artizan. Our partners were ready to respond if called upon. We in New Orleans had been through this many times before, and most of us thought this would be a 2-3 day inconvenience, but for some reason this storm was causing me concern.
• Gassed up the cars Saturday night and by daybreak on Sunday (28th) we (wife, three children and the dog) were on the road headed to Natchez, MS. This was the first time our family had ever evacuated. What would normally have been a 2.5 hour drive would take us 8 hours to complete.
• We rode out the storm in Natchez and watched what we thought was a "near miss" of New Orleans. By Tuesday the 30th it was clear what had happened with the levees and flooding in the city and we all knew we were not going back to New Orleans any time soon.
• An emergency was declared with both Agility and Artizan on Tuesday evening. By that time no calls were being routed out of New Orleans because all of BellSouth's circuits were flooded. Artizan took over our website and posted their 800 number on the site. This would prove invaluable in the coming days as our clients searched for us. Agility found us a location in Baton Rouge and told me to meet them there on Friday September 2nd. The trailer was on site on Friday and operational on Saturday September 3rd. All of this while faced with the evacuation of over 1.5 million people and the results of the largest disaster in the history of the United States.
• The stories of our 37 employees and their families could fill a book. No lives were lost, but 27 employees suffered complete destruction of or significant loss to their homes. Automobiles, pets and family possessions were gone. Lives were shattered and the uncertainty of what the future held was almost paralyzing.

In the midst of this loss, this pain, the total disruption of our lives and near total destruction of our city and surrounding areas, the employees of Gillis, Ellis & Baker began the road back.

Relief, Recover, Rebuild & Re-Birth

With our temporary office established in Baton Rouge, our first task was the assembling of our staff at the new location. By my guess, the 37 employee were scattered over 9 states from Texas to Virginia. Communications were a mess. Land lines in the New Orleans area were gone, cell phone calls into or out of the 504 area code were very iffy - and besides, there was nobody there to take the call. Everyone in the four parish (county) area of Greater New Orleans had been evacuated.

What did work? Text messaging! I doubt more than a handful of our staff even knew they had text messaging on their cell phone before the storm, but it became our standard means of communication. My then 14 year son, PJ, was horrified by my lack of dexterity in text messaging and he took over the duties. He followed me around for over a week acting as my walking "Dictaphone" by typing in text messages and firing back replies.

Email also worked, and part of our plan included non-work emails (AOL, Yahoo, MSN, etc) as a means of communication. I was able to email some of our staff with instructions on the new operations in Baton Rouge. Through these sources and word of mouth I was able to track everyone down within a week. Several of our employees had not evacuated immediately and were trapped in the affected area - two of whom were rescued by helicopter.

It was a harrowing experience for all of us as we left our homes and watched the events unfold on television. It was actually a relief to go back to work. From three employees on Saturday September 3rd, we began adding people each day as they found their way to Baton Rouge. We threw ourselves into the task at hand. Service 911 forwarded us messages from the calls by email, and we "triaged" the calls and set them up for return calls. As word spread of our new phone number and location, clients began calling direct and coming to the trailer. 14 hour days were the norm, but at least at work we all felt useful and productive. We did not have to think about the chaos and destruction going on at home.

Getting the agency up and running was a huge task, but that alone would have proven easy. Adding to everyone's stress was the need to find housing, take care of family members with special needs, get the children enrolled in school, and fight the gridlock of traffic in Baton Rouge which grew from a city of about 400,000 to almost a million overnight. Work, while stressful, was a refuge from the chaos all around us.

We handled over 3,000 claims in total, and handled over 10,000 calls. All of this was possible thanks to Service 911. We could not have handled the volume of calls without the first response capability of Service 911. Through their CSRs, many calls were resolved quickly and the claims process begun. When follow up was needed, we were able to assign the call backs based on our current personnel and work load.

The recovery trailer was our island of hope and sanity during those first few weeks. By the third week in September we were close to fully staffed and began looking for semi-permanent office space. It was estimated that our office building in New Orleans would not be ready for occupancy until mid-November at best, and we need more space, land lines for our phones and hard line internet service.

We were able to find two adjoining Class B office suites in Baton Rouge, and we moved there the third weekend in September. With Agility's blessing and help, we simply took all of the computers, the servers, the furniture and supplies out of the trailer and set up operation in the office space. The new offices gave us all of the upgrades we needed, and some simple creature comforts like separate bathrooms for the men and women.

What we didn't change was the esprit de corps that had developed among the entire staff. You could almost feel it, the bond that had formed as we worked to bring our agency back to life, help our clients and assist each other through the most trying times we will hopefully ever know. We nicknamed it The Spirit of the Trailer.