Katrina's Lessons

Is Your Studio Prepared for the Worst?

I’ve operated a full-time video production studio, Video Specialties, in Slidell, LA since 1990. We do events, corporate and educational videos. From our storefront, we take in editing, duplication and film transfer orders. In the studio, we shoot televisions shows, training videos and special interest programs.

I found out on Friday, August 26, 2005, that a major hurricane was coming off the tip of Florida and heading right for the New Orleans area. Unlike most hurricanes, this one gave us very little preparation time. I had a wedding in Downtown New Orleans on the next day and confirmed with the bride that it would still take place. I shot the wedding on Saturday and immediately went to my studio at 1 am Sunday morning to prepare it for the storm. My studio is in a strip mall that was on high ground and never flooded. In fact, in 15 years the parking lot never flooded, even in the worst downpours or storms in the area. I felt the worst case would be a few inches that could ruin the carpets and anything that was on the floor. I put CPUs, cameras and other gear up on table tops should a little water cover the floor. I did anticipate having to work from home for a few days, so I loaded a few pieces of equipment. I took some of my shooting equipment to document things at home. I loaded all customer orders and my most important masters, just in case water came in from a damaged roof section.

On August 29, 2005, my life and business changed in a dramatic way. I rode out Hurricane Katrina from my home in Mississippi that is 25 miles north of my studio. The winds downed 40 trees on my property and left me with no water, phone or electricity for 3 long weeks. There was no communication coming from Slidell for nearly a week after the storm. I heard on the radio that the city was closed and no one would be allowed in until further notice.

I finally got to my studio by sneaking in through some of the lesser-traveled roads. As I neared the southern part of the city, I witnessed incredible devastation. There were boats scattered everywhere— boats in and on top of buildings, in the middle of main roadways and stacked on top of each other. Cars were hanging from fences, overturned and driven through storefronts. Buildings were flattened. Water had reached ten feet in some areas. There was nearly a foot of mud covering everything. Dead fish were everywhere, left behind from the floodwaters. The people I did see were walking around in a zombie-like state of shock.

When I drove up to my shopping center, I could see the water was still about three-feet deep in the parking lot. I parked my van on the shoulder of the main road and waded through the water in the parking lot. My studio’s front door was blown out. The water line on the front wall was over five feet high. As I entered into the building, I saw complete destruction— everything was turned over and scattered all around the rooms. A six-inch layer of mud covered the floor. The first thing I noticed as I went down the hall and into my shooting room was the unusual amount of sunlight filling the room. The entire outside wall, about 50 feet wide, had collapsed. My studio was completely destroyed.

For the first three weeks after the storm, we all just tried to survive. The simple things in life became the most precious of all: ice, air conditioning, taking showers and even getting a fast food meal was a big deal. Nothing was open so there was nothing to buy. We had no communication with the outside world, except by battery-powered radio. Once the cell phones started working, I contacted the phone company and had my business line forwarded to my cell phone. Thus began the rebuilding of my business.

Starting Over

I began operating from a small building at my residence. I only had $25,000 in contents coverage but it allowed me to replace the most important gear I lost. Event after event cancelled. With the local economy all but gone, my wife and I concentrated on our educational videos that were mail-order based. My insurance company finally sent me my first loss of income check in November, a good three months after the storm hit. Six months later, things began getting better every day. We had survived the worst. By this May and June, I actually exceeded sales from the previous year, and sales continue to match or exceed sales from May-July 2005.

What can other facilities learn from this? Start by always assuming that anything can happen. I never thought I’d see six feet of water in the area of my studio. After all, it was on very high ground about several miles from a large lake that empties into the Gulf of Mexico. I believed, wrongly, it would never be flooded. I didn’t anticipate the seven-foot tidal wave that came in from the lake and covered half of my city in a matter of minutes. But I’m optimistic about the future. The New Orleans area will be smaller but my customer base should remain strong. The area’s shown great resiliency. I’ve replaced all of my equipment and I rented a smaller office about a mile away from my previous location. Rent is still triple what it was before the storm, but with an SBA loan, which took about nine months to come through, I am also adding some shooting space onto my home. Here are a few more rules to work by that will help you prepare for the worst and bounce back to the same or even better business than before:

1. 1. Insure against all possible perils. Get enough insurance—period. I lost $75,000 in equipment and only had $25, 000 in coverage. Insure against the most unlikely disasters for the amount of equipment you really have and be certain you save equipment receipts. Proof of gear purchase is the first thing the insurance company asked us to provide.
2. 2. Get Loss of Income/Business Interruption insurance. My stress level during the past year was substantially lower because I had this kind of coverage. With sales ranging from zero to 70 percent down in the first five months, I would have been lost without it. The monthly checks let me pay my bills, keep my good credit rating and gave me the resources to begin the process of clean up and restructuring.
3. 3. Diversify. Specialists are no doubt great at what they do, but it always makes sense to diversify the markets in which you work. If I was only a local event producer, I would have probably gone out of business. Because I had a line of instructional videos that are sold nationwide, I had a viable option that didn’t depend on the local economy. Work a variety of markets that include not only your local area but customers/clients from diverse geographic locations. Selling content online is the surest way to attract a broader, national audience.
4. 4. Learn to think out of the box. In extreme times, you need to be creative and change how you think. In less than a month after the storm, I began advertising my services for the restoration of flooded videotapes into DVD masters. I was able to make money while providing people with a service that made them very happy, mostly because I gave them back their memories after they had lost everything.
5. 5. Backup everything and secure irreplaceable footage. If you’ve got advance warning, back everything up-from tax documents to marketing designs and copy— to an external hard drive. I also packed up all masters, raw footage and customer orders in a large, sealed trunk before the storm, and took both with me. I only lost four customer pictures that I was working on the Friday before the storm hit. Guess what? She sued me in small claims court for $200. I just paid it to make it go away and got back to work.