Understanding the Importance of Damage Assessment In Continuity Planning

Many business continuity planners don’t completely understand what damage assessment entails. You can’t assume you’ll get your building back the minute the fire is out, or the water is contained.

Until your local health department declares your building “safe for re-occupancy,” you should not operate your business there.

Do you know what your organization’s responsibilities are versus those of the municipal authorities and first responders? Who is responsible for performing a damage assessment and mitigating the loss? Where does your organization’s responsibility for cleanup begin?

The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) says that depending on the circumstances and the type of facility, most fires are extinguished in approximately four hours and most buildings are not burned to the ground. In many cases, however, it can take 12 to 72 hours until officials perform the initial damage assessment. This will take even longer if they suspect any hazardous materials and call in a HazMat team.

Your BC program must then help you facilitate a quicker damage assessment of your facility. A well-designed and maintained site and damage assessment plan that includes pre-loss site safety audits, along with disaster avoidance, mitigation and good loss control and waste management practices should be an integral part of any organization’s business continuity planning effort.

Creating a Pre-Loss Site Safety Plan

Can you really make a damage assessment quicker before disaster even strikes? You can, with some proper preplanning before a loss.

First, build a relationship with your local emergency first responders (i.e. fire, police, etc.). For example, take a first responder representative on a preloss walk through your mission critical facility or facilities. Familiarize them with your facility’s drawings, including any improvements you’ve made. Make your Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) available to them. Get them to understand your time-sensitive business and service recovery needs. This process can greatly expedite the process of first responders getting you the emergency damage assessment information you need after the incident.

Next, take your facility’s unique environment into account. In many cases, manufacturing operations, healthcare facilities, museums, storage warehouses and other facilities require a more complicated damage assessment and restoration than other types of facilities.

Manufacturing and distribution facilities, for example, often have diverse risks and complex processes which combine to create a planning conundrum for BC professionals. Just as we plan for recovery and continuity from natural and man-made disasters such as fires, floods, earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes and power outages, these facilities also must deal with exposure to hazardous materials, storage rack collapse, a clean room environment penetrated, vehicular impact, vandalism, malicious mischief and supply chain or labor interruptions.

The Basics of Damage Assessment

Good pre-planning will only take you so far in speeding up a damage assessment. The real key is how well you mobilize after the disaster. Here, we outline the elements of a damage assessment.

1. Examine equipment and electronics
Identify items that require lab packing (containing and removing hazard classes of material such as flammable liquids and corrosives). You will also need to profile and dispose of those materials.

Carefully examine electronics and, if necessary, have experienced technicians test them to ensure they meet the manufacturer’s operating and performance specifications. For example, if electronic equipment has suffered thermal damage or been exposed to excessive heat, it’s unlikely you can restore it. If equipment was exposed to just smoke for a short time, however, there may be very little damage.

A moist, humid environment can severely corrode equipment within 48 to 72 hours. Ideally, you would be able to clean all of the equipment and remove the contaminants at the same time, but the volume of equipment, restoration versus replacement decisions, insurance coverage issues and re-certification requirements can delay the process.

You should also have pre-qualified specialists do the proper testing as quickly as possible to determine the quantitative and qualitative corrosivity. Emergency mitigation procedures, such as removing surface contamination and applying corrosion inhibitors, can buy you the time you need to make the necessary replaceor- restore decisions.

2. Perform a structural damage assessment
Have a state-licensed structural engineer (or a professional engineer who specializes in structural integrity) perform a thorough investigation of the structure as quickly as possible. Be sure the engineer complies with your state requirements.

After a fire, the engineer needs to look at structural conditions, including: distortions in structural columns, beams and slabs, fracturing of connections, spalling of concrete members and cracking of concrete members.

“If these conditions exist extensively, perform material tests to determine if the strength of the structural materials has been affected by the fire,” recommends Ian R. Chin, SE, AIA of the Chicago, Illinois firm Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates, Inc. “Perform surveys of columns and beams to determine the extent of their distortions and to evaluate the affect of the distortion on the load carrying capacity of the structural members.”

3. Test for hazardous material contamination
OSHA requires every individual who enters the building to wear protective clothing and have special training, depending on the type and level of non-routine contamination experts find or suspect at the facility (including PCBs, asbestos, lead, cadmium, mercury, etc.).

An internal or external certified industrial hygienist must test for any health, safety and environmental concerns that may exist. Once the hygienist performs an in-depth site assessment and analyzes samples, your pre-qualified hazardous material decontamination specialists can identify and perform the proper cleaning and decontamination protocols.

4. Perform a fire damage assessment
Determine if any routine contamination exists, such as the by-products of a fire. In the event of fire, you may assume some areas of the building are unaffected. They can still suffer heatand soot-related damage, however. The initial damage assessment should always address both indirect as well as direct fire-damaged areas. Contamination, such as fire combus-tion by-products, may lie hidden behind the obvious physical damage.

Other building materials can form sulfates and nitrates. Since each fire leaves its own unique chemical fingerprint in the soot, what burns in what quantities under what conditions will determine the chemical components.

5. Check water for residual chemical damage
Water from either floods or fire suppression can also carry contaminants. That water can deposit inorganic salts from building materials and atmospheric particulate matter on exposed circuit boards. Also, chilledwater systems often contain glycol, which can adversely affect certain types of paper and magnetic media. You should always analyze the water’s ionic content, acidity, suspended solids and organic content.

6. Inspect for mold and mildew
You need to be concerned about the growth of mold and mildew spores anywhere there was standing water or moist, humid conditions for more than 48 hours. Mold affects not only the structure, HVAC systems and critical documents and magnetic media, but can produce “sick building syndrome” as well.

Have a certified industrial hygienist conduct a thorough damage assessment and decontamination of the HVAC systems. With today’s technology, it is unlikely you will need to replace the ductwork. Instead, you can apply the proper EPA-recognized biocide through various fogging and cleaning applications. In compliance with your local and state regulations, it will be necessary to do follow-up clearance sampling as the final step in returning the facility to a safe and healthful condition.

7. Care for wet vital records
With major water damage, you can lose vital records very quickly. In dealing with paper in moist, humid conditions, you have about 48 hours before damaging mold and mildew grow.

Reduce high temperatures and vent the areas as soon as the water has receded or been pumped out. Keep water-soaked materials as cool as possible by good air circulation until you can stabilize them.

You should also complete certain procedures such as washing away accumulated mud, sewage and dirt prior to freezing the documents. When removing wet documents from file cabinets or shelving, do not attempt to pull them apart while wet. Remove all documents in blocks, if possible, so you do not increase deterioration. Leave a space about the size of your fist in the packing box for proper air circulation.

Once the documents are frozen and/or in cold storage, choose the proper drying method. Freeze-drying, a process involving freezing the documents immediately and then sublimating them, is the most effective way to restore water-soaked documents.

If the documents are not soaking wet, you can also air dry them through dehumidification. In this process, you introduce dry air (by using either desiccant or refrigeration dehumidification equipment) into the moist environment which absorbs the water vapor.

Successfully recovering vital records on magnetic media requires many of the same considerations as hard copy documents. Water can erode through the substrate, destroying data in the process. To be effective, you must employ proper recovery procedures, such as restoring a relative humidity below 50° Fahrenheit and use proper drying and cleaning protocols within 72 to 96 hours of damage.

The cleaning and drying methods you use will also depend on the type or degree of damage. You usually open and dry water-damaged floppy diskettes, for example, using isopropyl alcohol, then inserting them into empty jackets and copied onto new media. Depending on the situation, you can either freeze-dry or machine-dry magnetic tapes. While you must freeze-dry cartridge tapes, you can dry open-reel tapes on tape cleaning machines. You can then use tape drives with recovery software to copy the information onto new media, however you need to ensure the tapes are dry and clean before you make any attempt to copy the data.

You can lose data on wet microfilm through improper handling, such as allowing it to dry on its spool. In most cases, it is best to leave the microfilm in water until you can properly pack it and send it to the appropriate recovery location.

Flood waters can contain hazardous materials and therefore you must perform the proper health and safety procedures during retrieval and recovery of your vital records.

Being knowledgeable in what is required in a thorough damage assessment, utilizing personnel who are trained in this field and executing this part of the plan in a timely manner allows senior management to gain the critical initial damage information they require to make executive recovery decisions.

This article was published in the Disaster Resource GUIDE for Facilities (Fall 2006).