MONTGOMERY, AL (WSFA) -
Thursday's electrical fire at the RSA Tower highlighted the importance of disaster plans for those who run large buildings or large companies or agencies.
The RSA used lessons from the past as it dealt with Thursday's incident. In 2006, a large water pipe burst knocking out power and disrupting operations.
"You've got to make sure you have a plan in place," said Joe Toole, a spokesperson for the RSA. "It may not be as anyone likes it to be. But you've got to make plans to try and secure temporary power, to try and get fuel for that temporary power."
16 tenants use the RSA Tower - including large companies and state agencies. Former state EMA Director Lee Helms now runs Lee Helms Associates. It's a company that helps businesses and government agencies plan for events just like this one. He says coordination internally and among other tenants of the building is key to making it through disruptive events.
"Logistics, resources that would be needed to first protect people, and then protect infrastructure," Helms said, adding that back-up plans for key systems are also important.
Raycom Media, the parent company of WSFA 12 News, is headquartered in the RSA Tower. Raycom's engineers and IT workers relocated to the WSFA studios as they worked to get email, human resources and programming systems back online for the 47 stations the company owns and operates across the country.
"We always have postmortems to find out afterward what we could have done better," said Dave Folsom, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for Raycom Media. "We're very proud of our ability to react to these kinds of unfortunate circumstance that happen to any large company."
Folsom said the upcoming weekend will give Raycom Media and the other tenants in the building some breathing room to get all of their systems back online.
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