Being Prepared and Proactive for Natural Disasters, with Special Guest Tony Thompson

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Transcript

Erin: 0:37

Welcome back to maybe potentially the most favorite episode I have or will ever record. Because today my guest is the Tony Thompson, the senior project manager for Ratcliffe recovery services, or as I know him, my husband.

Tony: 1:03

Hello. Thanks for having me.

Erin: 1:07

for allowing me to be on the podcast.

Tony: 1:11

Exactly. I'm super, super excited. I've been begging for a year. I'm what am I on the list now? Like 19 or 40? I can't remember which one.

Erin: 1:21

We have talked about recording this podcast for, at least a year and we have officially begun, which is nice. So

Tony: 1:31

yeah, super excited.

Erin: 1:33

Yeah, so the goal today is to really talk about the big elephant in the room down in the South and the Southeast, which is hurricane season. And then wrapping all of the hurricane talk into really being disaster prepared, which is important. but I feel like we need to preface this conversation with saying, we don't have a perfect marriage. We, love each other very much. We've known each other since we were 16. We may, say silly things to each other because we just literally can say anything because there's a good foundation there. And we've been, overcomers in a lot of different scenarios. it's an open book, it's an open book. This conversation is going to be an open book. that being said. Would you like to give, I talk about married couples. I've made a few reference with my LinkedIn posts about how I think sometimes senior living leaders spouses can be compared to military spouses because at the drop of a hat plans can change at the drop of a hat. somebody will have to go in to handle a crisis that's going on. And the spouse is left. Carrying on whatever the plan was for the day. So tell me, cause we've never really talked about this before. Tell me what it was like, uh, for 20. Well, yeah, I mean, I guess for the majority of our relationship being, married to somebody who was pretty much married to her career and to the people that she served

Tony: 3:22

here. I think first and foremost, I've always said, and I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this in the past is the executive director role and position within senior living communities is one of the less under appreciated. Positions pretty much out there. it's really challenging. it was really challenging actually, just to sit back and just, do the best I can at home while you just try to keep it together. as a community, with 150, employees, 120 residents, and this is just at one community. And I've ran multiple jobs with, close to that many people. And it's just, it is total and complete and utter chaos just trying to, organize that let alone on a daily basis, like mine will be for eight weeks out of the year, whatever the case may be, and yours was literally 24 hours a day, seven days a week, Monday through Sunday, January 1st, through December 31st, every single year for, I would say a solid 16 years. in the past 20 and it was, it was challenging on a lot of different scenarios. I think you even use the term married to work and some sometimes it felt that way. but also understood because I also have a passion for helping people as well. and I think that's what is really, been great for us as a couple. But. It was very challenging. Let me just say it that way. I don't want to get too wordy in there. And I do think that the executive director position as a whole is the 1 of the most underappreciated roles out there.

Erin: 4:46

Yeah. You don't know until, you know, and you don't know everything that you have overcome the problems that you solved and all the things. Until you recover from what you didn't know. and I think it is important. for leaders to understand that if you do have a significant other, that it affects everything and it's important, we certainly did not do a great job, consistently in protecting what needed to be protected. We just allowed things to happen and boundaries were certainly something that we did not do well in that. we do better now.

Tony: 5:29

Yes, much better.

Erin: 5:32

And I think that's something that I hope that. This conversation and also, content and things that we share in disaster preparedness can, some of that can also be applied inside relationships to where there are certain things that we can do to prevent a disaster from happening. And certainly boundaries and acknowledgement are a few of those. don't ask us how we know, because that's a whole nother podcast.

Tony: 6:01

So part two of this podcast. Yeah. Active listening.

Erin: 6:06

Yes. Yes. Okay. So I get asked a lot or I have asked, been asked a lot, just in various different roles as your wife, this question, what does your husband do? and I say things like, He talks about mold and science and construction and he's a storm chaser and he controls chaos in the middle of chaos. He tries to control it. but that's my way of answering that, the fact that you're a senior project manager with Ratcliffe Recovery Services. I'm going to let you answer, what do you do and how did you get there?

Tony: 6:54

Sure, to just give a full circle, where I'm at now and what I actually do now, I'd to go into kind of how I got where I'm at. it's interesting for those of us that do know us and know us fairly well for the past 20 years. it's been interesting because I was in, certain tie, Upper management with AT& T authorized retailer for them for nine years. and then AT& T took some direction change And in a nutshell, I wasn't necessarily willing to do what it took to transition in and there at that point, probably in 20 12, 20 13 range, began my exit from at and t. And with that being said, I didn't really know exactly what direction I was gonna head. so I ended up. Getting into the contracting world a little bit. I started with the fence company for a brief period of time. And then I partnered with, my stepdad, doing some air conditioning work over around town and mobile and, not expecting to fully get into that. And full disclosure, my entire family was air conditioning guys, refrigeration guys, respectively in their own right. And I stayed as far away from that out of college as I could. And so into the air conditioning side of things and found out, wow, this, I actually really like it. I enjoy it. And I like the science of it all, which, long story short, turns to in the summers, I would be busy with HVAC work, right? And then in the fall one year, wasn't really busy. And I had a friend asked me if I wanted to go and, do some supervision work, some project management work out of town, and I was like, why not? and you and I were able to make things work out at that particular time, so I was able to leave for two weeks is what I was told. Hey, yeah, just for two weeks. I was like, ah, okay, I'll go out for two weeks. That turned in, I think, three months and that was my first taste of disaster recovery, work and. Quite honestly, even at the age, I think I was 36 somewhere around that range. I was fascinated by the entire thing. I was floored by the entire thing. I didn't fully understand what was going on. And so by hearing you how you described what I do, it was very much the same way. And I was actively working on site at this particular time. And it was very interesting to do that because I literally it took me no doubt three weeks to fully have a good understanding of the chain of command who does what who runs what who's the decision maker here. And what it ultimately boiled down to is, in the disaster world, you're just going there to mitigate. All or, remediate, sorry, remediate all damages that have been caused, whether it be by hurricane flood, we'll get into some of that stuff later. because it's so important that you get all of the moisture and water out of buildings, which is how from the drying side of what we do ties into my air conditioning side. ultimately, that is exactly what I'm doing is I'm going into remediate, mitigate any future damages. and. Prevent anything from worsening, and get to the point where we can start doing the put back all in, all at the same time, And immediately after we've got the building remediated, and we dried it out.

Erin: 10:09

And so you like to do that. You do that for senior living communities, for hotels, for schools, different, just all along the Gulf coast and the Gulf States. You're not quite the movie twister because you don't go like out into the storms. we don't quite do that, but I like the story of you avoiding a lane of life for so long and then life through curve balls. And you ultimately pivoted and started becoming open to the idea of actually using your strengths that lay dormant for so long and. Acknowledge them and said, Hey, I this, right? I like the chaos of this. I like to fix things. and I have this experience of being the spouse of someone inside senior living. And wow. I bring another layer of expertise into a niched market, which is senior living, which is, Not often that you get right. It's not often that you get that

Tony: 11:20

Yes. And it's, it is, I think we can both agree that, the senior living industry, as well as the school industry, our children, some of the most important people in our lives and then the parents, right? The, the other set of most important people in our lives, we both intersect together. and in 2020, if you remember how, insane that year was, I think it was like 21. It was the highest, named storm season of all the history of hurricanes and tropical storms And I was doing work in Cameron parish at the time on a school over there. And, we had Sally come through, which was supposed to go through New Orleans at the time and. This is one of those stories and I know you're looking like, why'd you bring this up? It's so important and fascinating because this is a real event, right? So I'm doing work over in Louisiana while my wife was over here at our in Baldwin County in Alabama. And I'm a solid every bit of six hours driving distance away. And there's really, and anybody that knows about Cameron, it's at the end of nowhere, there's no quick way to get there. So Sally, I wake up that following morning, had went from going to hit new Orleans. It shifted all the way and ended up like Gulf shores in the Pensacola area, which, fortunate for us, we were the West Iowa on that side, not the East. So it wasn't the absolute worst. Again, it knowing what I know, it could have been so much worse, but Aaron, I'm gonna let you take it from there. And that this is just, this is an experience that I just think everybody should know about on that.

Erin: 12:56

I, okay. I was cocky and thinking that a category two storm was not going to be something that I had to worry with. I'm Jim Cantore Jr., female version, and weather excites me, and it's just a category two, and it's going to move on. I did have a few people spend the night. I didn't force everybody to spend the night. I was there. life was good. My regional director stayed, so we were covered. I didn't take into consideration that it was moving so slow or the fact that we had a lot of rain, over the previous few weeks. And so the ground was completely saturated already. So I wasn't Jim Cantore Jr. I, again, I told myself something that wasn't true. So everything's good. It's just rain. It's not that big of a deal. there's some water coming in. It's fine. But we were prepared for that. I had two full size generators inside my community. So I, again, had the ability to be very cocky, arrogant, until, 5 o'clock in the morning for 35 o'clock in the morning. I got a call from my nurse on duty and said, the lights weren't on in a memory care. And I said, what do you mean? I was in assisted living in the activity room on an air mattress. And I went over there and sure enough, the winds were still going. It was like a hundred miles an hour. And the, all the memory care doors were opening and closing because of the wind and it was loud and we had a lot of memory care doors. a lot. There was over 20 memory care doors. so I was like, What is going on? And I knew my maintenance director really tended to these generators. I knew that we had a full tank of gas and I knew that the assisted living generator was working. I just didn't know that the memory care one wasn't. And so I began to do what any darn good administrator would do and I started investigating. And that required me to go outside in 100 mile an hour winds. Climb up on the ladder and figure out why this generator wasn't working, which is every HR directors nightmare. But the administrator's nightmare. Was 25 doors opening and shutting with a hundred mile an hour wins, right? And there was nobody that was going to come and help us. So it had to be. And long story short, I don't really know how it didn't work or how it did work. But after 20 minutes of phone calls and prayers and jumping up and down and demanding God do something, it worked. this is the conversation that we're having on why Schools and senior living leaders and senior living companies inside on the coast need to be prepared for hurricanes because don't be cocky, be prepared. I was prepared for lots of things, but I wasn't prepared to see every tree down and all the roads being blocked because the ground was so saturated with water that we lost some of the biggest trees that you would never think would ever fall over. very much. To 100 mile an hour winds that we can get in the middle of the summer, so what I learned from that is you have to be prepared. And that's why we're having this conversation. so what kind of disasters do you help people mitigate your customers mitigate?

Tony: 16:53

Sure. So I think that was the perfect segue to where we were going here. I guess that was there, but ultimately, if we're getting into what I'm hoping that we can discuss today is I think it's important for everybody to be prepared. and be proactive with their thinking as far as on their game plan on how they're going to go about getting stuff, situated in the event of a natural disaster or a mechanical disaster. that leads me into the portion of where, it's interesting because being proactive and as well as being prepared, although they sound the same thing, I think it's important to know, for me, in my experiences, it's a little bit different in the simple fact that when you're being proactive, you're wanting to have a plan in the event of something that's going to happen being forward thinking and really having, having a plan for your community or your school, And so how can you be proactive? How can you be forward thinking with this? And I think it really just comes down to, having and compiling a complete list of everything that You're going to need in the event of some sort of either natural disaster or mechanical disaster. there's, there are two different types of emergencies that can be brought into the or a school. And so I want to get into that first. So most people, when they think of a natural disaster, of course, as we just discussed, it's going to be a hurricane or tornado, fires, floods, and then, of course, you've got the freeze and ice storms that come through right? And all of those, none of those are good in any single way, shape, fashion, form, and they all have to be prepared for uniquely in their own way. The other types of things that most people actually forget about, to be honest with you is going to be your mechanical stuff, whether it be plumbing, whether it be HVACs, Cool system, malfunctioning, fire sprinklers, anything that's mechanical, guess what, just like your vehicle, you take your vehicle to get it maintenance, right? You take your vehicle to get oil changes, you, you're proactive and preventative maintenance on your vehicle. It's the same exact thing, just like with your home, it's the same exact thing with your communities, right? And the difference is, you can. You can slip things around on your homes and get away with it. You cannot get away with this at a community area school because the smallest thing can be so detrimental to an entire wing of a, of an entire building. And so any of those malfunctions or failures can really lead to a major problem. So don't forget about those types of emergencies because those are equally as important. Mhm. And I think that's where kind of some of the proactive talk comes back, stepping back into the proactive and preparedness. the way I envision being proactive is just having a plan, right? and by having a plan, I'm, what are the first steps if this were to happen? If your generator, do we have generators? Number one is a great question, right? Do we have generators? if yes, great. Are they maintenance right? Are they running? Are they, when is the last time do we have a log where we keep up with all these things and most, most state organizations are going to want you to have that. Obviously, that's, those are just the be a couple of them, then your HVAC. all of your systems there. Are they maintenance? Are they preventative maintenance? Are they, How detailed y'all get into those right and then of course from a plumbing side or a drainage side outside, getting your drains cleaned out whatever the case may be to prevent water from entering the building. And then, of course, from a freezing standpoint, you have attic heaters in some, and then you can also do, insulation on the outside of the sprinklers, so there's, there are several different options that you can do to prevent some of these things from happening, or mitigate, the, from damages coming to you. and then I think there's for me, that's being proactive. That's just taking the, the physical and really trying to do everything that you can to make sure that you're situated. Everything goes and plays in from one thing to the next. And I think that's just, that's the overall important part, right? Is just, are you doing what's necessary? To prevent damage from happening in the future. so pressing forward to my vision of preparedness, right? So are you prepared? Alberta is out there, right? Is forming, right? So are we prepared? I like we've got our plan but are we prepared if this thing is getting to the point where we have two to three days we know it's going to come to our area in some way Do we already have the wood cut and ready for board up on the windows if we're going to board up the community. Do we have. do we have our generators? Are they running? Are they working? All of those things. Those are the things that in sandbags in front of doors in case water is trying to flood in there. It may sound ridiculous, let's say if it does flood, but sandbags all of those things. If water's moving fast enough, it will slow down instead of having three foot of water in your building, you might only have one, right? And that, believe it or not, it matters because different category of waters will do different things.

Erin: 21:54

but let me say, do you have you seen those socks, like window, like the socks was not the sandbags, but we had, My main instructor used to call them socks and we would put them because we have found at my last community, when the winds came in at a certain way that water would come in through the tech units, they would, and then it would soak the carpet and certain doors would literally allow a lot of water inside the community. And so sandbags, we had some, but we really invested in these socks. Is that what they're called? Socks?

Tony: 22:30

I'm not exactly sure what they're called, but yes, I know exactly what you're talking about.

Erin: 22:34

They're little blue, long.

Tony: 22:38

It's almost like one of those things you swim in a swimming pool.

Erin: 22:41

they look, yeah, they're absorbed and they go at the bottom of the door and it will prevent, yeah, prevent puddles of water coming in. So yeah, sandbags or door socks. I got nothing like that, but yeah, P tech units, the wind will blow water through the P tech units. And so you have to be mindful of that. Do you have, a plan or are you proactive? And who can suck up that water very quickly from that residence room?

Tony: 23:14

yeah, and that's a very good point to wind driven rain is another category of what we do, right? And it doesn't have to be a hurricane or tornado. It can be a thunderstorm, right? some of these thunderstorms that we've been experiencing in Alabama. Anyways, and Louisiana. I know I've been, the darn rain's been sideways. I was driving on the road 1 time and I saw waves coming through when I was heading throughout. I was like, holy cow. This is insane. but yes, so wind driven rain, it can be just as detrimental and let's say 1 of your, gutters along the front of your building gets stopped up in the next, somehow it ends up going into the wrong spot, all that stuff matters. And I think that's for me being prepared. That's what I'm thinking when I'm thinking of prepared, are you ready? If the storm were To be here tomorrow, right? that's you actually putting and taking initiative into your plan that you've been proactively already, putting together. I think it's also important to get maps and having facility access having call lists, your third party partner, services. it's extremely important for you to have a representative that represents the client, the community, or the school, or whomever, and that's, Hired on as a third party. it just minimizes your chances of having any issues in the event of trying to collect money from insurance and stuff like that. cause ultimately. one thing with us is we want to help anyone through that process to collect from the insurance companies, neglect what they're owed, what they're deserved. We're not doing anything that we shouldn't be doing. and I think it's important for people to know that in most cases, with the right partnerships, your liabilities minimizes just having a professional there to do this type of work, everything minimizes and it's mitigated. collectively, we will help make sure that you have all the documentation that you can get, in order for you to receive funds from insurance company. but again, there's a process to all of that. And that's why I think it's important for everyone to know that, if you don't have the plan, which, in most cases, your disaster relief contractor will help you with those plans. Thank you. If you do have one, it's very important to have those put together. And in that way, that's just the proactive side of being proactive for the storm. It's the same concept, we help with all of that stuff. I think it's

Erin: 25:34

just important to summarize that. With your reactive and you're calling a company that, you know, just by the color of the vans. Then you may not get the support in a disaster. The way that a disaster recovery. Company can do and so to be proactive and to be preventative to have a relationship with a disaster recovery company who specializes in recovery, of your current community school, hotel, whatever, and to recover dollars insurance dollars that you are owed and to help you. And so it's important that you maintain control throughout the process. That's important. And that's what prevention and planning will get for you. And obviously with Ratcliffe. A senior project manager knows a thing or two about the inside of senior living and can help. And one of the proudest times that. Or really awareness times that I had was when you were in Dallas when the big freeze or after the big freeze happened in 2021, and you were working in a long term care community and you had to literally shut down an area inside of that. Community and create an outside kitchen and a 100 degree weather. I feel really bad for those people that had to work in that outside kitchen, but you had enough awareness enough experience. From a personal level of how you can keep administrators, executive directors, calm, and how you can say, Hey, from awareness, preparedness, proactive planning, we're going to be doing this. So I can assume this is going to affect you in a negative way. How can we plan for this? This is going to happen in the next 2 days. and if you don't have that luxury, you don't know how important that luxury is. So how did the experience. of being a spouse of an executive director help in creating a successful experience for that long term care community during when their sprinklers burst and you had to make it right for them.

Tony: 28:01

Sure. It was interesting, honestly, full disclosure, I had actually previously been working, for a assisted living senior living community, prior to, you Radcliffe, And so I literally left from one single living community to take on, my role And I'm like, this is interesting, right? and I wasn't even fully sure what I was walking into. It was hey, here you go. And Basically, the 1st, literally, the 1st 1 that we were doing work on was a memory care community. memory care hallway and I was like, this is going to be fun. trying to get the residents out into a different hallway It was all around tough, but I was able to relate to the administrator significantly. And to be honest with you, I empathize with them extremely well because I understood and they truly knew that I had concern and that, hey, I'm here for you. whatever this is going to take them. yeah, I'm here to help, take out the, the bad and put in the good, but how can I actually help you? and it's amazing. some of them were just looking at me like, I don't really understand what you're asking. I just need to go back in there and get to the ground. Actually, it took probably two to three weeks before they would warm up to the point where he is actually here just to help us and do whatever we can But I think empathy was the biggest thing and I listened to them, because they had questions sometimes, but it was more once they learned they can trust me, I didn't have to talk to them a whole lot. They just were able to do their job, and I updated them. Daily. Some people want multiple updates throughout the day. Some people just want daily updates. But communication was key. Just like in our relationship as a marriage, it was key with the relationships with the administrators, with the regionals, the maintenance directors, but overall, it it helped me, I know that being able to fully be comfortable inside of a community and know You know, after seeing it for 20 years, I know exactly what they're going through and how I can make it better.

Erin: 30:03

yeah, I think that's ultimate. The goal, right? Is of every business, what problem do you solve? And then what makes you different than the competitor and how you solve that problem? And I think that, Having a senior project manager who understands the business inside and out is a huge competitive advantage and certainly a luxury that most senior livings would want in their time of need as well as schools. Yeah. So to give a summary of ways to help prepare for this hurricane season. correct me if I'm wrong, but we want to a, no, if you have a generator, right? Understand that preventative maintenance. As boring as it may sound and be is actually critical in times of disaster, with, examples that we've used. And if you do have full size generators, you need to go ahead and top them off. It's always good to at least top them off once a year and get the preventative maintenance done before the hurricane season. And have yourself a disaster recovery expert team ready for you, because in the times of disaster, and if you need them, who do they go to 1st, they have a contract with.

Tony: 31:37

Yeah, and I think that's I'm. Glad you brought that up. And from a pre disaster standpoint, just so people understand, one of the, one of the main things that we will do is we will always do a site assessment, so it's, if we get, an agreement with you, we'll do an aside assessment, will help you with your insurance policies to make sure that have the correct insurance policy. For example, you may not have her have mold coverage up to 5, 000 or sewage coverage up to 10, 000. Things like that do matter. And at the end of the day, you might think you have coverage on something, but you don't. That's just one example but and I think it's important for make sure. And again, a lot of communities already have a lot of this but You'd be surprised I've ran into some that do not, but like contact information, alternate contact information, personal emails are great too because guess what happens if it's a local community and that community is down, your local servers are generally down, which means your emails aren't working. and sometimes cell phone towers may not be working as well, And then to make sure that we have Full facility access. and then maps, I think having maps of the buildings is great. If you do not, I would recommend getting them. there's a lot of different softwares out there that now that can, that can really make your mappings so much easier. And we can actually do that as well. because that way, whenever you have a map, you know exactly it basically speeds everything up and it makes all of our documentation correct and easier from that point moving forward. And then I think the other thing is, every community has specific contractors that they use vendors, whatever it may be, whether it be HVAC, whether it be electrical plumbing, any mechanical contractor for that matter. But have make sure you have that list available, right? if an event does happen, for warranty purposes, it's always good to call the company that's installed them. If it's within a certain period of time, like those are small things that, that really do matter in the long run. and then also from a post disaster standpoint. So we want to do everything we can to help you in the process to be. proactive and prepared for a storm. And then from a post disaster, for example, like you just said, generally, somebody will be on site within, to do a site assessment within two hours of an event happening, depending on the locate, sometimes if it's, Northern Alabama or Louisiana or whatever it may be. Sometimes it can take a little bit further depending on which office we're going to send out that way. but for the most part, we're going to try to have mobilization within 24 hours and try to get on site as fast as we can, as long as the trees are cleared off of the road. In a true natural disaster, if the trees are cleared off the road and all that, we can get to you, which sometimes can take 48, 72 hours, depending on how bad that it was.

Erin: 34:19

Absolutely. So no, you have a generator. Preventative maintenance, the list of people who you would contact in the case of emergency, your food vendor, your vendor, your sprinklers vendor, your generator vendor, all those things and to really consider having a disaster recovery contract in place. So they can help you immediately in the times of those, those storms and hurricane season. It's coming.

Tony: 34:46

I'm telling, where your water shut offs are. Yes. That, that's always a fun one when you can't find the water shut off and nobody has a clue where it's at as you're one of your sprinklers is busted and it's just pouring everywhere.

Erin: 34:58

Yeah, so know those things, because. Your maintenance director may be on a workman's comp leave or an FMLA leave like mine was at the time of that Category 2 storm, and they're not accessible. it's important to really talk through all these things and be prepared. So that is the name of the game, be prepared. and hope that you never have to use it. So I appreciate your expertise in this area and your willingness to be on a podcast and to, teach communities to aspire for more for themselves.

Tony: 35:42

That's exactly right. I'm super excited. I hope, I hope people got some good information on this.

Erin: 35:47

Absolutely. And again, this is Tony Thompson from Ratcliffe recovery services, and he serves Ratcliffe recovery serves the entire Gulf States during and hurricane season and beyond. thank you for being here. I appreciate it. And always to my listeners aspire for more. For you.