Metairie, Louisiana, an older suburb of New Orleans that was partially flooded during Katrina, was the home to central station monitoring provider Alarm Monitoring Services. And even though the town flooded, Alarm Monitoring Services had a plan in place to keep the company's business operations in tact.
As part of the response, Alarm Monitoring Center, moved its operations to the DICE Corporation Disaster Center, located near at DICE's headquarters in Bay City, Mich.
"The last time we evacuated the hurricane didn't hit as hard," said Dera DeRoche-Jolet, company president, in a statement. "People laughed at us and we even lost some accounts, but after speaking with the Office of Disaster Management, I knew that New Orleans was vulnerable. It was just a matter of time."
Besides being able to pick up its accounts while using the DICE disaster center, the company also picked up a new location before the storm in Monroe, La., which is considerably further inland. The location, estimated to be over four hours away, will be running by mid-September.
DeRoche-Jolet said that many of the company's employees lost homes, but everyone in the company was "safe and well."
Alarm Monitoring Services is online at www.monitor1.com.
