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New Zealand SSAA MeetingsPosted by Scott on 21st April 2011

SSAA Auckland Dinner at the 'Mercure Downtown' – 29/03/11

Rennie Schafer headed up the Auckland dinner which predominately focused around the recent events in Christchurch and the way in which the earthquake had affected the storage industry and its staff. There was discussion a plenty around the need to have contingency plans in place throughout the industry for disaster recovery both from the storage facility side and also from the SSAA side.

Mark Bateman was guest speaker who discussed how Storage King rallied to support their sites and people during the earthquake. Mark shared pictures from his recent trip to Christchurch and showed how their site SK Ferrymead had been affected which was mind blowing to say at the least.

Mark voiced the need to support the people on the ground as top priority in these situations before attempting to get the office and site up and running again.

As a result of the Christchurch earthquake Storage King have made changes and revised their contingency plan in order for enhanced future proofing and they strongly suggest other companies in the industry to do the same. All in all the night was extremely informative, provoked a lot of discussion and was an initial eye opener for what was to come in Christchurch the next night.

 

SSAA Christchurch Dinner at 'Chateau On The Park' – 30/03/11

Rennie Schafer and I hosted the Christchurch dinner at the Chateau on the Park one of the few hotels in the area that had minimal damage from the recent quakes. There was a good turnout of members attending the dinner all sharing their stories of the damage and turmoil created by the 6.3 earthquake at 12.51pm on the 22/02/11. Hearing how everyone was affected in different ways yet all enduring the same experience was dumbfounding at times.

Storage facilities that had literally been picked up and shunted backwards, major cracks through the concrete slabs that facilities stood on, liquefaction that had to be shoveled out of driveways, cars driving into huge rifts in the roads, it was literally like something out of a Hollywood movie.

Even though you saw the aftermath it was at times hard to comprehend the severity and reality of the situation and how people were dealing with living through the daily aftershocks.

On the night of the dinner there was even a 4.2 aftershock in Merivale approximately 1.5km out from the Christchurch city centre. One other factor that all the sites had in common as a bi-product of the earthquake and that was they were all at 100% capacity. In this time of uncertainty and upheaval people need a place to store their belongings and most sites had waiting lists over a page long for those that they were unable to accommodate.

 

Many thanks to all that attended and shared their stories, Rennie and I were just  happy to be able to provide everyone with an opportunity to step away from the daily reminders of the quake for the night and enjoy a meal and conversation with fellow storage compatriots.

 

Regards,
Scott (Technical Support Team Leader, StorMan Software)

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