We were lucky
by
At 2:18AM last Wednesday morning (October 27th) I received a phone call, actually my wife Anne answered the call. It was Vicki Kenworthy, managing broker of our West Suburban Office. She was calling to tell me our West Office was on fire. Anne felt lucky it wasn’t one of our daughters. You know what I mean, if you have kids or grandkids living somewhere other than down the hall. I got dressed and was on the scene by 3:15AM. In route I called Tom Prall our Company President. When I arrived, Vicki was already there. MaDonna Meadows had already met and decided the best place to temporarily relocate the office would be to our Avon-East Office. Dave Danz, our Avon East Manager was called at 3:30AM. He got on it immediately. He arrived on the scene by 4:15am to see what he could do to help. George Christodoulou, our IT Manager was called by 4:00AM. He had the West Office phones rerouted to Avon East by 8:30AM. By mid-morning, the West Office agents were notified about the fire and that that we were relocating to Avon-East. By days-end, agents had been assigned a place to land at Avon-East. As soon as the ashes had cooled and the fire investigators would allow, the Carpenter team was in the burnt-out building salvaging all of the currently active and pending files and hard-drives from the computers that survived. Within 48 hours files, computers, phones, desks, chairs, etc were in place for the West Office team at Avon. Luckily, we were back in business.
It was amazing. Nobody had to tell anybody what needed to be done or how to get it done. They just did what needed to get done and did it now! Somebody’s son had a trailer. Another manager had extra desks and chairs in their office. Agents and managers had strong backs to load and unload stuff. Another manager had extra telephones. Somebody else had a computer they could spare. Somebody thought to order yard-signs.
Everyone realized we were all very lucky. We were lucky no one was in the building when the fire started. We were lucky no one was injured. We were lucky the alarm system worked on the building and luckily the IMPD Officer responded to the alarm run in 180 seconds! We were lucky the Indianapolis Fire Department responded in less than 7 minutes. We were lucky the fire took place at 2:00AM rather than 2:00PM. It gave us a 6 hour head start on what ended up being a very long day. You know, you can get a lot done from 2:00AM ‘til 8:00AM. We were lucky Vicki and MaDonna took charge at 2:18AM. We were lucky Dave Danz and his team at Avon-East were/are so welcoming and supportive. We were lucky George got the phone company to respond so quickly in the middle of the night. We were lucky everyone wanted to help any way they could…and did. One week later, we are still getting lucky. The West Office turned a new listing and a sale in on today’s Daily Activity Summary report.
How lucky can you be.
Posted by: 
David Caveness
