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Surviving a Fire: Beyond Stop, Drop and Roll HOW Magazine
It all started one Sunday night when Terry Graves received one of those late-night phone calls that occasionally bother business owners. The alarm company called her to say there was a break-in at her office but she wasn’t particularly concerned. Assuming someone left helium balloons floating around the office or the cleaning crew accidentally tripped the alarm, Graves’ husband, Richard, drove over to check out the situation. He brought their 11-year-old son along because he thought everything would be okay. It wasn’t. He called Terry immediately on his cell phone after making the two-minute drive to the office. "You won’t believe what’s going on here," he told her. "Everything’s on fire–it’s all gone." The alarm had tripped because of a melted wire. Graves immediately called her partner, Cindy Fowler, and told her the building that housed their design firm was burning. They both rushed from their homes to the studio to find a sobering scene. Smoke billowed from their office building in Silver Spring, MD. Flames leapt from the windows and rooftop and fire trucks and flashing lights were everywhere. Graves and Fowler watched helplessly as 13 years of work burned to ashes. Fowler recalls ticking off in her mind the possible losses–the computers, the records and the design files–while hoping no one was in the building. Fortunately, no one was, but the flames made it clear that their top-floor studio was blazing into destruction. By about 1 a.m., the firefighters told them there was nothing they could do, so the partners went to the Graves’ house in a state of numb disbelief. "We just sort of sat around the kitchen table and shook our heads," Fowler says. "We looked at each other saying, ‘What do we do? What do we do?" Up by the Bootstraps
So how did Graves Fowler move from desolation to prosperity? The firm’s principals made a series of leadership decisions, before and after the fire, that helped them weather the proverbial storm. These decisions ranged from having good insurance to knowing how to inspire their staff under tough conditions. Their most important decision occurred in the wee hours of the morning after their studio was destroyed: They resolved to go on. "People assumed we were going to give up because there just wasn’t anything left, but I thought, ‘This is the only thing I know how to do,’" Graves says, laughing. "We had an incredible staff, and everybody needed a job, so we had to start over again." Early Monday morning, Graves and Fowler called their staff so no one would show up to the burnt husk of an office. Then the firefighters allowed them to survey the damage, which was as bad as they had feared. Temperatures high enough to bend steel rafters in the ceiling had melted and twisted office furniture beyond recognition and what wasn’t ashes was soaked with water from the firefighters’ hoses. Computer cases and monitors were melted into surreal shapes, and light fixtures stretched like stalactites from the ceiling in sculpture-like forms. On Tuesday, the entire staff donned surgeon’s masks and dug through the ashes, looking for anything salvageable. The firm rented a storage unit to keep items of dubious use. Some records were destroyed; others were charred but could be photocopied. At first, the staff only joked about fixing the computers but, on a lark, sent the melted Macintoshes to the firm’s computer consultant, Uptime Computer Services in Alexandria, VA. To everyone’s surprise, Uptime was able to transfer all the data from the melted computers to loaner computers within three days of the fire. The firm set up temporary quarters in the Graves’ basement, where desks were assembled from sawhorses and doors from a home-goods store. The firm’s six designers billed hours that week. Because Graves Fowler’s designers work directly with clients, the staff hurried to call all active clients. "They were constantly reassuring people that we were back to business as usual, even though it was far from ‘as usual’ for us," Fowler says. The staff’s interactions with clients freed the principals to work on the logistics of rebuilding, such as setting up the temporary space, working through the insurance claim and finding a new permanent space. "We didn’t lose a client because of the fire, and we didn’t miss a deadline," Fowler says. Salvaging archival data from SyQuest cartridges, floppies and Zip disks took longer than the three days it took to fix their computers, but Fowler estimates that the firm retrieved about 98% of its data. Ironically, Fowler and Graves had spoken with their production manager the previous Friday about purchasing a firesafe to house archival data or storing archival materials off-site. The partners put it on the to-do list, not knowing their priorities would change radically over the weekend. Trial by Fire Soon after the fire, fire investigators told Fowler and Graves that the fire was arson and it started in their studio. During the week prior to the fire, the partners were gathering evidence to confront a staff member they believed was misappropriating studio funds; the employee later was terminated and pled guilty to three counts of fraud. Because the fire started under suspicious circumstances, every Graves Fowler staff member was interrogated by police and underwent a polygraph examination. Other business owners and employees in the building were also questioned by police. No one was ever charged with setting the blaze. "It’s not only the trauma of losing everything, but then having people say, ‘Did you set the fire?’" Fowler says. "That was emotionally draining for all of us." Graves and Fowler realized early that they needed not only to care for their business’ needs but also their employees’ personal needs. Within days of the fire, Graves called one of the firm’s clients, Jennell Evans, vice president of Strategic Interactions, which is a consulting firm specializing in crisis management and other difficult workplace situations. Two weeks later, one of the Strategic Interactions’ psychologists led a workshop with Graves Fowler’s employees and principals to help the staff understand their feelings and work to improve the situation. The interim was difficult. Employees felt anger about starting over, outrage at whomever had set the fire and confusion about what the future held. "There was a really weird feeling of being unsettled and insecure," says Mariann Seriff, a designer who has worked at Graves Fowler for more than 11 years. Because Seriff worked for the firm before it moved from the Graves’ house into an office building, the move back into the Graves’ basement was akin to stepping back 1o years. The Strategic Interactions psychologist, Dr. Jennifer Wilde, led discussions that helped the staff express the stress and professional difficulties they’d been enduring. "I think it helped for everyone to get their thoughts together and then just got rid of them," says Kristin Braaten, who started at Graves Fowler one week before the fire and by her third week with the company was reduced to tears by a polygraph administrator’s interrogation. "Eventually, you’re going to have to deal with it," Evans says. "It’s just like when you’re dealing with something dramatic in your personal life–you can only deny it for so long." Graves and Fowler’s participation in the half-day workshop was important, Evans says. The principals’ presence not only gave them a chance to air their own feelings and communicate to employees that they too were grieving, but it also allowed them to understand what was on their employees’ minds. "There was still some anger in that session, and I’d gotten beyond the anger, Graves says. "Everybody was at different stages during the session." For instance, Braaten, as a new employee, was still observing the ways in which people in the office related to each other, but was also concerned about being the first one to lose her job in the crunch. Some employees were angry that no one had been charged with setting the fire, while others just wanted to get back to work. "It was a benefit that we approached things in different ways," Fowler says. "Different people brought different strengths into our situation. Some were able to laugh about it more quickly than others. Some were more angry than others. Being able to put those emotions out in our session relieved the tension and made you feel like it was OK to feel what you’re going to feel and then move on." Evans says a disaster such as a fire can be especially harmful to the productivity of designers, partly because their more affected by their surroundings than, say, an accountant. Seeing 13 years of work reduced to ashes has an especially traumatizing effect on visual thinkers. Also important was that Graves and Fowler helped employees feel more secure by immediately telling them they weren’t giving up, Evans says. As a result, employees believed the company would recover and move forward. "We tried from the very beginning to communicate to our staff that this didn’t mean they were losing their jobs, that we were going to go on," Fowler says. "So it shifted from ‘Oh my gosh, am I going to lose my job?’ to ‘How can we work together to make this studio survive?’"
Design Triage Abnormal workplace distractions abounded in the makeshift conditions of Graves’ basement. Network cabling hung from the ceiling. There were no drawers or cabinets for supplies and filing. The power went out occasionally, possibly because the equipment was drawing too much energy. Printers and phones went on the blink. Plus, add the complication of working in the house of a family accustomed to having free run of the space. Braaten recalls a day when two of Graves’ sons, home for summer vacation, dug a hole and filled it with water for some frogs they’d captured. "Every 10 minutes they would knock on the door and say, ‘Kristin, Kristin! Look at the frogs!’ and I was like, ‘OK, I’m on deadline.’" Graves estimated that the fire caused the firm’s revenues to drop between $50,000 and $75,000 dollars in 1997. She says the drop contrasted with past years when revenues were consistently rising. Graves Fowler’s insurance company, Erie Insurance Group, didn’t compensate the firm for the revenue loss because it wasn’t enough to be considered an irregular business fluctuation and, ironically, because the firm was back in business so quickly. Erie Insurance did compensate Graves Fowler for the 550 hours the firm spent on the recovery process, including time spent digging through the burnt-out office, storing and moving supplies and equipment, setting up the new office, copying smoke-damaged disks, locating a new office and working on the insurance claim. At the insurance company’s rate of $15 per hour, though, Graves says that having employees billing hours for all that time would’ve been more helpful to the bottom line. Other aspects of Graves Fowler’s situation were more positive. The computer equipment was replaced with faster, current-market equivalents to what the firm had purchased In the past. Because Graves’ husband, Richard, is the firm’s accountant, the general ledgers were kept at the Graves’ home; Graves was able to quickly provide documentation of the firm’s losses. In turn, checks came back from Erie Insurance quickly. Fortunately, Erie wanted Graves Fowler back to full capacity as soon as possible. Soon after the fire, designers were already sending projects to the printer. Vendors donated services, such as printing for cards notifying clients of Graves Fowler’s new location, and clients brought in meals. "It was like there was a death in the family," Seriff says. Working closely and cooperatively with their vendors over the years paid off during the time when the firm was struggling, Graves says. "We try never to burn bridges." A Room with a View Revenues are rising again, and Graves Fowler’s new studio resides on Security Lane in Rockville, MD. The spacious, 11th-floor office on the building’s top floor affords views of the Washington Monument, the Washington National Cathedral and the Mormon temple. By serendipitous chance, Graves Fowler had outgrown its old space, and its lease was coincidentally up in August of 1997. The timing was perfect to find a better space. Graves Fowler enlisted the help of an area real-estate broker who found the Rockville space and helped the firm move in by the end of September. They learned the timing was especially fortunate because landlords are under no obligation to put their businesses into temporary space while the insurance company decides whether and when to rebuild the space, although rent is usually abated during the wait. Because most of the firm’s financial records were at the Graves’ home, Graves Fowler continued to bill active accounts. They did need to dig through the soupy ashes to find equipment serial numbers for the insurance claim and have since begun zealously recording them. Few remnants remain from the old office. Graves and Fowler kept a storage space with many charred objects from the old office until they were ready to part with all the useless rubbish, nearly five months later. "It’s been more than a year now and I’m down to 10 books," Graves says. "It seems like every month, I throw out another 10. It’s taken a while, gradually I realized that the pages stick together and there’s soot on the edges. But I couldn’t have done that the first week." Other items, like a mouse that melted into the shape of a whale and a clock with droopy hands, they keep to show that humor can cover old scars. Gradually, wounds have healed and Graves Fowler is looking toward a bright future in its new studio. "We just have an upbeat sense about being here," Fowler says. "It’s good to come to work. I think we appreciate it–all of us–because we once lost it." Nate Hoogeveen is a Missouri-based freelance writer. editorial@howdesign.com Used with permission from HOW Magazine © 2000. Not for reprint without express written permission of the publisher, or parent company F&W Publications, Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Other news: |
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• ©2008 Graves Fowler Creative, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Most design schools don't offer Fire Survival 101, so after a blaze destroyed the Graves Fowler Associates studio on June 22, 1997, the firm’s designers found themselves taking the crash course. Fortunately, these designers from the nation’s capital earned an A+ for quickly learning that disaster survival isn’t graded on a curve.