CRAFTING A BEFORE
DISASTER STRIKES BY ADAM STONE
As a brutal cold snap battered the East Coast in December 2017, Jon Tagatz was reminded of another especially cold season four years ago, when he saw his community get swamped, literally. As executive director of The Heritage at Brentwood in Brentwood, Tenn., an LCS community, he had
the helm when freezing temperatures burst 30 sprinkler lines at the top of a three-story building. “All of a sudden when things thawed out, we had gallons and gallons of water rushing down,” he said. Tagatz’s team scrambled to move residents into vacant units, to relocate people to nearby ho- tels, and to get contractors on site to begin repair work. The key to getting through this $1.7 million disaster smoothly? Planning. “Because we had a plan in place, we were able to get the water mitigation people in there right
away. The contractor was on site the same day, because we had already established that relation- ship and we had that expectation in place,” Tagatz said. Disaster planning has always been a part of senior living: Responsible providers understand intuitively the need to prepare for worst-case and what-if scenarios. Lately, though, there has been an increased intensity surrounding the need for such plans, as the frequency and severity of natural disasters continues to rise. With three major hurricanes, assorted wildfi res, drought, fl ooding, and freezes, 2017 was the most expensive year on record for natural disasters, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Sixteen major events rang up $306 billion in damage.
6 SENIOR LIVING EXECUTIVE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2018
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