ICS News

Clawing Through the Storm: Veterinarians (and cats) rejoice over ICS!

Three million homes lost power from Maryland to Maine in the freak Oct. 29 snowstorm, but it's fair to say that Connecticut got disproportionately whacked. The state initially reported more than 830,000 outages at the height of the storm, with many of those homes forced to stick it out for a full week.

As of last night, there were still more than 37,000 Connecticut Light & Power customers in the dark for the second straight week. Several towns were forced to change the locations of polling places today for municipal elections. The Associated Press described our distinction as  being inducted into an "unenviable fraternity."

Amongst the last areas to get their lights back: West Hartford and the Farmington Valley, the backyard of ICS.

We've seen firsthand how these past 10 days have been a horrific drain on business productivity in the region. Even though we specialize in helping small businesses prepare for the worst case scenarios, we also care about the intangibles not so easily measured.

..like the stress level of our clients.

At the Cats Limited Veterinary Hospital in West Hartford, the power outage had a domino effect on the day to day operations. Perhaps most crucial were the medicines and vaccines that required refrigeration. Those were kept in the kitchen refrigerator of the only employee on the staff of 12 who still had power.

According to practice manager Shannon Lovley, a problem of equal concern was no access to the computer system. Since May of this year, Cats Limited has been a "chartless practice."  All medical records, appointments, and prescriptions are entered directly into the system, leaving the animal hospital virtually powerless to do anything without it.

Miraculously, ICS was one of the few businesses in Farmington not to lose its power. We invited the cat hospital to manage its operation out of our headquarters -- more specifically from the office of Wayne Curtiss, one of our Senior Infrastructure Consultants.

"Wayne just said bring me the server and don't worry about any of the cords or monitors," says Lovley. "He just cleared off his desk, sat me down in his chair and said 'stay warm!'"

"We're like an emergency shelter for servers," says Curtiss, who provides IT expertise for the hospital. "We'll bend over backwards to make sure their critical systems are running. We're truly business partners and we'll be there even when the whole world is going crazy."

Even though they had no power, Cats Unlimited was able to process its payroll, reschedule customer appointments and attend to a handful of pet owners with sick cats during the week.

"We have a bunch of prescription diet cat food we needed to get to our customers and we were swamped with calls from people asking to board their cats, hoping we had power. We actually were updating our clients on Facebook!" Lovley says.

Cats weren't the only creatures on the hospital staff's mind, however. Two large fish tanks filled with tropical fish had to be emptied and transferred to smaller tanks for safe transport to warmer refuge. Only a handful of the specialty fish didn't make it.

The lights came back at Cats Limited the evening of Saturday, Nov. 5, with another emergency visit by Curtiss on Sunday when the staff had some issues reconnecting the computers.

"We had unplugged the server in the dark, so there was confusion over where all cords were supposed to go," says Lovley. "This whole experience has been frustrating for everyone, but I really appreciate Wayne's help to keep us open. Sometimes you just have to power through these things."

With Connecticut Light & Power hopefully getting the last parts of the state back to civilization this week, there will be a lot more happy employees (as well as fish and cats).

But it's not a stretch to say this won't be the last time that our patience and resilence is tested.

ICS proactively prepares small businesses to withstand unexpected emergencies and we're here for our clients when they need us the most. It might get a little crowded at our "shelter for servers," but we'll even share our desks if necessary!

Was your business impacted by the outage? Register now for our Ask The Experts event December 6 and discover how together, you and ICS can prevent your company's loss of productivity the next time mother nature strikes!