The SSGI Team Is Awesome!

I know we have great team here at SSGI. But, you never know what to expect when a disaster occurs. As everyone knows, Connecticut had one of the worst October storms in its history on Saturday, October 29th. The storm dropped over 12" of snow and caused power outages for 87% of the state. By Saturday night most of the state and most of the SSGI team was in the dark. Kim was the only one to not lose power. Today, November 8th, 30000 homes in the state are still without power and unfortunately for some, it may still be a couple of days before it comes back on.

On Sunday I checked our office and found it too was without power. In fact, 97% of Torrington was without power. I checked in with our staff via very spotty cell service. Everyone was ok but looking forward to the power coming back on. At home I got our generator up and running and got some Internet access via my Verizon MiFi device. Most of my family moved into our house where we at least had heat, water and a DVD player.

On Monday power was still out in most areas. However, East Main street in Torrington was now live. That meant several gas stations and DUNKIN DONUTS were open. I started contacting Clients that I could get through to. It was not looking good. Still over 80% power outage in the state. By now Northeast Utilities was indicating the power would be out for an extended period in many areas of the state. Dunkin Donuts and the gas stations were total chaos. A trip to the office verified we still had no power.

On Tuesday power was getting restored to a few more areas. I worked with several Clients helping them get their servers back up and running. None of our staff had power back yet. In the afternoon power came on at home, but the office was still down. I contacted the guys and scheduled a meeting at our office on Wednesday morning so we could get to Clients that needed us. Around 5:00pm Gayle and I took a ride to the office. Power was still out. But within about a half hour it came on. I got our servers up and running and verified we had Internet as well. We were back in business!

On Wednesday morning everyone arrived at the office. I was the only one with power at home. But we started working on tickets immediately. As power was coming on our Clients needed us and we were there. We had a Client that was told they would not have power for at least a week. Because of the nature of their business, they needed to get on-line to process orders. We made plans to move their servers and some staff to our offices. The guys went home that evening to homes still in the dark.

Thursday came and still no power for any of the guys. We proceeded to move our desperate Client to our office. And the guys continued to handle tickets. Sometimes they had to improvise routes to the Clients because of trees down in roads. The state was still over 50% without power,

Over the weekend we saw lots of power come on although the guys still had none. Everyone of them showed up for work on Monday. These guys worked their butts off during this event. Other than stopping home to fill generators and check on their families, they were there for our Clients.

I'm proud of our team and what we accomplished during this disaster. As I write this, John is still without power. He is also on the road taking care of our Clients.

This has been a tough experience. There is a lot to be learned from it. One thing I learned is that we have an awesome team. I thank every one of them for their extraordinary efforts. Because of them, our Clients were able to get back up and running as soon as possible after power was restored to them. Let's hope we don't see anything like this again any time too soon. But if it does, rest assured this awesome team will be there to take care of our Clients.