Preparedness is Key for Contractors Battling Hurricane Ike

When Hurricane Ike hit land in Texas last week, Robert Taylor was more than ready. It helped that the president of Houston, Tex.-based Bio Landscape & Maintenance, a Yellowstone Landscape Group company, is used to annual hurricane threats. It also helped that Taylor knows that the only way to survive a natural disaster is to be prepared at a moment’s notice. “Ike was real fast,” Taylor says. “We thought the storm was going to hit in South Texas coming from the gulf, but when it started turning northward, we had two days before it hit. It was time to get serious.”

A lot of the preparation techniques Taylor used to battle Ike were initially implemented to battle Hurricane Rita, the storm that was expected to hit Galveston and Houston in 2005, but instead veered East toward the Louisiana boarder. Moving much slower than Ike, Rita’s threat provided enough time for Taylor to create hurricane preparedness documents, which were ready and waiting for him upon Ike’s arrival.

Taylor and crew’s first task was to lay over more than 44,000 trees on the company's tree farm to prevent them from snapping in half against the wind. They then moved all equipment to higher ground to protect from flooding, and moved all of the company’s mobile construction trailers in-house. Taylor had 20 extra chainsaws and four extra generators delivered to the shop the Friday before the storm hit, as he knew supplies would be hard to come by in the days after. He also faxed all of the company’s 100-percent commercial clientele informing them the company would be closed over the weekend and providing emergency contact numbers for after the storm subsided.

Perhaps the most important aspect of the plan was preparing for a prolonged power outage. In order to utilize the company’s large generators, the circuits had to first be wired accordingly. The generator has been running continuously, providing light, Internet access, and phone and fax lines to one of the company’s buildings. This has made communication possible, Taylor says. “Bids have been flying though e-mail and fax everyday,” Taylor says. “If we didn’t have power, we wouldn’t be connected, and if we’re not connected we wouldn’t know what these peoples’ needs are.”

Taylor estimates spending about $20,000 in equipment necessary to prepare for the storm. Because of the thorough preparation, Bio Landscape & Maintenance was back up and running by Monday - two days after the storm hit. But the company’s first priority wasn’t their clients, it was their employees. “It’s like when you’re on a plane - if you lose cabin pressure, you’re instructed to put your own mask on then tend to others,” he says. “We first had to make sure own people were OK before we could start helping others. Some of our employees and their families went two days without eating.”

The company set up a sort of soup kitchen on Monday, “cooking from noon to night,” to feed employees and their families. At the same time, account managers were contacting any clients they could reach while able crew members started tending to heavy tree work. Crews maintained their regular weekly schedule, visiting clients in the order they normally would. “We have relationships with our customers,” Taylor said. “Even if we couldn’t get a hold of them we went a head and cleaned up their property knowing they or their insurance would eventually take care of it.”

Taylor and his crews plan on working seven days a week until most of the main devastation is cleaned up. But total restoration will take years, Taylor says. For example, Bio Landscape & Maintenance recently imported and installed 54 palm trees on a property in Galveston, all of which were demolished. To help ease the labor burden, Bio Landscape & Maintenance’s Atlanta-based sister company, Piedmont Landscape Contractors, a Yellowstone Landscape Group, arrived last Friday and will stay for a number of weeks. 

For contractors ever facing a similar situation, Taylor stresses the importance of taking care of your employees first. The devastation people can encounter during disasters like Hurricane Ike are both physically and emotionally draining. “The stress level is unbelievable during times like these,” Taylor says. “The staff has gone through a dramatic experience, but they still have to come to work and help others. It’s a good idea to have some kind of counseling, because you don’t know how people will react until it occurs.”

Secondly, it’s important to find a way to be connected via telephone and e-mail. “If you can’t answer the phone or operate fax or e-mail, it’s detrimental not only from business standpoint but a community service standpoint as well,” Taylor says. “It’s also a good time to call your friends in the industry. The bigger the workforce available, the more you’re able to do for the community.”