Brad's Story Page 2 of 2
The jet is very luxurious, leather chairs, inlaid wood, air conditioning, hot food; it's surreal to be on it after leaving Gulfport behind. With me on the plane are Ben T. Computer Operator, Kimbel R. Micro Apps, Milton L. Computer Operator, Ken F. Systems, Eric E. Micro Apps.
As we are checking into the hotel nearest our recovery data center, two coworkers walk into the lobby: Jeff A. Host Programmer/Team Leader like me and Eddie C. Computer Operations Mgr. They beat us to Chicago. Eddie had flown up with the master tapes and was babysitting them. Jeff, who evacuated to Memphis with his family before the storm, had put his family on a plane to Houston where extended family could take them in, and then driven straight to Chicago. He beat the plane crew to Chicago by a few hours. We drop off our luggage (those of us that had any! Ben lost everything in the storm and only owned the clothes on his back), and we're off to work.
We check in to the data center and get to our room. It has about 20 computer consoles all over the place. We settle in to getting the computer systems back up, and then caught up to current day. This takes us about five days to have everything major online and current. A lot of this time is a blur to me now but I'll put down what I remember.
The first priority is getting people on the coast access to their money. The bank atm network is down along with everything else. We quickly find that we can get the atm computer network up but that doesn't help much if the atm doesn't exist anymore, if there's no power going to the atm, if the structure the atm is in is now hazardous, etc etc.
Second priority is getting payrolls posted on accounts. Many local company’s direct deposit payrolls and people count on that money, now more than ever. We held up our first big computer runs to get every payroll we could into it; in many cases people got access to their payroll a few days in advance of when it was due.
Third priority was cutting customers a lot of slack due to the storm. We wrote programs and changes options to stop fees from being charged, like NSF, OD, ATM, Late Charges on loans, etc. We not only stopped our own atm fees but we even rebated any fees charged by out of town banks for using their atms. We also stopped sending info to the credit bureaus so we wouldn't report anyone as past due on anything. We plan on resuming the bureaus later but zeroing out any past dues on loans during the Katrina time, so nobody's credit will be harmed by being unable to pay a loan on time. We know we're losing a lot of income by doing this; in fact millions of dollars, but in the long run our customers will remember this and remain customers. In some cases we couldn't stop all fees from the first couple of runs, but we reversed them out within a couple of days.
We quickly got into a routine of working 26-37 hours, sleeping 2-3 hours then back to work. There is a break room beside our computer room, as I went to it to make pots of coffee I started catching glimpses of what was being reported on the T.V. about Katrina. It was obvious that this storm was much much worse than I imagined. (There was no news in Gulfport after Katrina, since power, phones, cell phones, even radio towers were out)
After about a day, I started stealing moments and emailing friends and family outside to tell them we are alive. I know that Nance participates in a couple of scrap booking forums so I register on one of them (twopeas or something like that, google is my friend). I start a thread there to tell her scrappin friends she is alive. http://www.twopeasinabucket.com/mb.asp?cmd=display&thread_id=1366316
I keep trying to get news to or from Nancy but there is no contact with Gulfport at all. I'm getting more worried as this continues and I watch the news from New Orleans. After a few days I get an email from a lady in Ohio, she's the mother of a lady who lives next door to us in Gulfport. She tells me that she finally received news from Gulfport and it's not good. She says her daughter was able to send a cell phone text message at about 2:00 AM and it got through. She tells me that Nancy is running out of food, water, dog and cat food, gas, everything; she was in a near-riot at a food distribution center so she went home and is now refusing to leave to find these things she so desperately needs. I ask her to pass on to Nance if she is able, to get out of Gulfport. I then start a frantic campaign to get her out of there or get supplies to her. I call coworkers in Denham Springs and ask them if there's any way we can get anything to her. Several ladies in the scrappin forums call or email me to find out more or to volunteer to help. I ask them to mail care packages to Nancy, Calvin, and our cat and dog. I call or email family to send care packages. One brilliant lady suggests, since mail delivery is down in Gulfport, that she mail a package to an office of my company outside the Katrina zone and then my company can get it to her. Around 10:00 PM, as I'm leaving a restaurant to go back to work, I get a call from Nancy! She tells me that a group of bankers visited her earlier this evening and ordered her to get on tomorrows daily bus from Gulfport to Baton Rouge. There she can stay in a hotel, or with bankers, or fly to Chicago or anywhere! Score! But Nance goes on to say that she's not leaving! That hard headed woman! She says she feels she's doing more good for the family by staying, that she can't leave the cat and dog, that she's working with neighbors and they're pooling resources. I use every argument I can come up with to convince her to leave, no luck. Finally I get dirty. I ask her what she had for dinner tonight. She tells me she opened a can of stewed tomatoes and it was delicious thank you. I tell her that I'm returning from a fancy steak restaurant where I sat in cold air conditioning, sipping a cold beer, before diving in to a filet mignon, with a delicious crème brulee dessert. Even this doesn't work, she's staying. She tells me even Calvin wants to stay, she offered him the chance to get on that bus and he'd rather stay too.
A few days later...
We catch up on all computer runs and I fly home for the weekend. I'm walking on air all weekend with wife and son around me. My cat is gone; Nance tells me she disappeared a couple of days after I went to Chicago.
Two weeks or so after that....
On a Wednesday afternoon my presence is requested in Gulfport for a business meeting that will take place Friday between 1:00 PM and 3:00 PM. I decide to surprise Nancy so I don't tell her I'm coming home. I make flight plans to arrive Thursday evening and stay until Sunday. When I get to Gulfport I take a taxi home, so the first Nance knows about this is when I come in the front door. I'm not sure which hurt more, the fierce rib-cracking hugs or the punches for not telling her! :)
Nov 11...
Today we returned all computer systems from Chicago to a temporary computer site in Gulfport. I am in charge of it on the Chicago end. During the week prior to the move I have the crew test out every step. We visit the airport (one we haven't used before) where we have two chartered flights planned, a fast lear jet for my crew and the 1st priority tapes, followed by a prop plane carrying our luggage and 2nd priority computer equipment. We do test fittings of the computer cases into our rental suv's and plot how we'll get everything to the planes. Everything was lined up by the day before we leave, I had a schedule and plot map showing how every box would fit and it was a near thing but we had the room. Then chaos! During dinner the evening before we leave, I get a call from Gulfport. Someone down there is sending another computer dude up here to babysit some file servers, and they say he must be on the jet returning. I argue against it and say they can return commercial, they're not bumping one of my guys at the last minute. The guys up here have for the most part been up here for the long haul,it is not right to bump one of them. Well I lost and Robert got bumped. He's not needed immediately on the coast to restore the tapes and file servers and the other guy is. F-bomb F-bomb F-bomb
I move on and we get it done. My schedule had the two planes lifting off at 10:00 AM. Some items took longer than planned, some went faster. We actually lifted off at 9:58 AM so I'm way ahead of schedule! :)
As we are checking into the hotel nearest our recovery data center, two coworkers walk into the lobby: Jeff A. Host Programmer/Team Leader like me and Eddie C. Computer Operations Mgr. They beat us to Chicago. Eddie had flown up with the master tapes and was babysitting them. Jeff, who evacuated to Memphis with his family before the storm, had put his family on a plane to Houston where extended family could take them in, and then driven straight to Chicago. He beat the plane crew to Chicago by a few hours. We drop off our luggage (those of us that had any! Ben lost everything in the storm and only owned the clothes on his back), and we're off to work.
We check in to the data center and get to our room. It has about 20 computer consoles all over the place. We settle in to getting the computer systems back up, and then caught up to current day. This takes us about five days to have everything major online and current. A lot of this time is a blur to me now but I'll put down what I remember.
The first priority is getting people on the coast access to their money. The bank atm network is down along with everything else. We quickly find that we can get the atm computer network up but that doesn't help much if the atm doesn't exist anymore, if there's no power going to the atm, if the structure the atm is in is now hazardous, etc etc.
Second priority is getting payrolls posted on accounts. Many local company’s direct deposit payrolls and people count on that money, now more than ever. We held up our first big computer runs to get every payroll we could into it; in many cases people got access to their payroll a few days in advance of when it was due.
Third priority was cutting customers a lot of slack due to the storm. We wrote programs and changes options to stop fees from being charged, like NSF, OD, ATM, Late Charges on loans, etc. We not only stopped our own atm fees but we even rebated any fees charged by out of town banks for using their atms. We also stopped sending info to the credit bureaus so we wouldn't report anyone as past due on anything. We plan on resuming the bureaus later but zeroing out any past dues on loans during the Katrina time, so nobody's credit will be harmed by being unable to pay a loan on time. We know we're losing a lot of income by doing this; in fact millions of dollars, but in the long run our customers will remember this and remain customers. In some cases we couldn't stop all fees from the first couple of runs, but we reversed them out within a couple of days.
We quickly got into a routine of working 26-37 hours, sleeping 2-3 hours then back to work. There is a break room beside our computer room, as I went to it to make pots of coffee I started catching glimpses of what was being reported on the T.V. about Katrina. It was obvious that this storm was much much worse than I imagined. (There was no news in Gulfport after Katrina, since power, phones, cell phones, even radio towers were out)
After about a day, I started stealing moments and emailing friends and family outside to tell them we are alive. I know that Nance participates in a couple of scrap booking forums so I register on one of them (twopeas or something like that, google is my friend). I start a thread there to tell her scrappin friends she is alive. http://www.twopeasinabucket.com/mb.asp?cmd=display&thread_id=1366316
I keep trying to get news to or from Nancy but there is no contact with Gulfport at all. I'm getting more worried as this continues and I watch the news from New Orleans. After a few days I get an email from a lady in Ohio, she's the mother of a lady who lives next door to us in Gulfport. She tells me that she finally received news from Gulfport and it's not good. She says her daughter was able to send a cell phone text message at about 2:00 AM and it got through. She tells me that Nancy is running out of food, water, dog and cat food, gas, everything; she was in a near-riot at a food distribution center so she went home and is now refusing to leave to find these things she so desperately needs. I ask her to pass on to Nance if she is able, to get out of Gulfport. I then start a frantic campaign to get her out of there or get supplies to her. I call coworkers in Denham Springs and ask them if there's any way we can get anything to her. Several ladies in the scrappin forums call or email me to find out more or to volunteer to help. I ask them to mail care packages to Nancy, Calvin, and our cat and dog. I call or email family to send care packages. One brilliant lady suggests, since mail delivery is down in Gulfport, that she mail a package to an office of my company outside the Katrina zone and then my company can get it to her. Around 10:00 PM, as I'm leaving a restaurant to go back to work, I get a call from Nancy! She tells me that a group of bankers visited her earlier this evening and ordered her to get on tomorrows daily bus from Gulfport to Baton Rouge. There she can stay in a hotel, or with bankers, or fly to Chicago or anywhere! Score! But Nance goes on to say that she's not leaving! That hard headed woman! She says she feels she's doing more good for the family by staying, that she can't leave the cat and dog, that she's working with neighbors and they're pooling resources. I use every argument I can come up with to convince her to leave, no luck. Finally I get dirty. I ask her what she had for dinner tonight. She tells me she opened a can of stewed tomatoes and it was delicious thank you. I tell her that I'm returning from a fancy steak restaurant where I sat in cold air conditioning, sipping a cold beer, before diving in to a filet mignon, with a delicious crème brulee dessert. Even this doesn't work, she's staying. She tells me even Calvin wants to stay, she offered him the chance to get on that bus and he'd rather stay too.
A few days later...
We catch up on all computer runs and I fly home for the weekend. I'm walking on air all weekend with wife and son around me. My cat is gone; Nance tells me she disappeared a couple of days after I went to Chicago.
Two weeks or so after that....
On a Wednesday afternoon my presence is requested in Gulfport for a business meeting that will take place Friday between 1:00 PM and 3:00 PM. I decide to surprise Nancy so I don't tell her I'm coming home. I make flight plans to arrive Thursday evening and stay until Sunday. When I get to Gulfport I take a taxi home, so the first Nance knows about this is when I come in the front door. I'm not sure which hurt more, the fierce rib-cracking hugs or the punches for not telling her! :)
Nov 11...
Today we returned all computer systems from Chicago to a temporary computer site in Gulfport. I am in charge of it on the Chicago end. During the week prior to the move I have the crew test out every step. We visit the airport (one we haven't used before) where we have two chartered flights planned, a fast lear jet for my crew and the 1st priority tapes, followed by a prop plane carrying our luggage and 2nd priority computer equipment. We do test fittings of the computer cases into our rental suv's and plot how we'll get everything to the planes. Everything was lined up by the day before we leave, I had a schedule and plot map showing how every box would fit and it was a near thing but we had the room. Then chaos! During dinner the evening before we leave, I get a call from Gulfport. Someone down there is sending another computer dude up here to babysit some file servers, and they say he must be on the jet returning. I argue against it and say they can return commercial, they're not bumping one of my guys at the last minute. The guys up here have for the most part been up here for the long haul,it is not right to bump one of them. Well I lost and Robert got bumped. He's not needed immediately on the coast to restore the tapes and file servers and the other guy is. F-bomb F-bomb F-bomb
I move on and we get it done. My schedule had the two planes lifting off at 10:00 AM. Some items took longer than planned, some went faster. We actually lifted off at 9:58 AM so I'm way ahead of schedule! :)
posted by Nancy at 1:27 PM
1 Comments:
Brad and Nance,
I am in awe of your strength and tenacity and courage during a very harrowing time! You two are to be commended (Calvin, too) for everything you have had to endure these last months. The sacrifices you've made are just unbelievable. I truly respect both of you.
Brad thanks so much for your side of things. Iiro, my husband, was particularly interested in the "guy's eye view", that and he's also a computer geek for HP. What a leap of faith you had to take to help your company (and therefore helping thousands of people hurt by Katrina) and part ways with Nance. I'm sure that must've been a lonely, anxious, and very trying time. Especially as news of how bad Katrina really was trickled in while you were separated.
They say that people's true character really reveals itself during tragedy, and that said, I have to boldly claim that both of yours are exemplary. Thank you, thank you for being such an inspiration. God bless you both!
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