Fires, Evacuations and Myths

What High Rise Managers Need to Know

By Hamlet Vazquez, MCAM-HR

NEVER SAY THAT WON’T HAPPEN TO ME. LIFE HAS A WAY OF PROVING US WRONG.

With the recent Southern California fires, emergency preparedness should be on everyone’s mind. While managers of large scale and planned communities, especially those in more rural areas, usually have plans in place for fires, it’s difficult to imagine how many anticipated that a fire would burn through a place like the Pacific Palisades or come so near to an urban college campus like UCLA that in-person classes had to be cancelled. As someone who manages a high rise about a mile from UCLA and less than three miles from the evacuation zone, emergency preparedness was certainly on the minds of our residents during these recent fires. For the first time, as a high rise manager, I had to think about emergency preparedness on a broader level. To that end, below are some aspects of high rise living to take into account when preparing and also some misconceptions and how to respond to them.

Where’s my car? Where are my keys?

While most communities don’t have valet service, those that do need to either figure out a way for the valets to quickly retrieve a large number of vehicles in case of an evacuation order or, better yet, make sure all residents know where their vehicles are parked! While the valets do have a list of where resident vehicles are parked, there is no map of the garage which would make it easier to show a resident where their vehicle is located. To that end, we are in the midst of putting together a well-laid out map of the five parking levels so residents can quickly find their vehicle. Along the same lines, we encouraged residents to find out now where their vehicle is versus waiting until the evacuation orders came through! On a related note, we hold on to most resident vehicle keys since we have to retrieve their vehicle so we encouraged residents to have a spare key in their unit so they would not need to rely on the valets to retrieve their key for them.

Our balcony furniture is flame resistant and is outside so even if it catches fire, it won’t burn my unit –correct?

No, not correct. I can attest from experience at a previous high rise that outdoor furniture can indeed catch fire and if it is in close proximity to the unit’s windows it can indeed lead to a fire inside of a unit. Because of this we actually encouraged residents to be ready to place outdoor furniture inside their unit if an evacuation warning was issued.

Since this is a full-service building, they have emergency supplies and water for all residents.

I was surprised to hear how prevalent of a misconception this was at my property. We had to notify the residents that the responsibility falls on them to make sure they have emergency supplies and water, and to not rely on the building to provide such items. While we do have emergency supplies and water for the staff, it would barely last one day if all residents depended on these supplies. Considering a possible evacuation notice, we reminded residents of the importance of having a ‘go-bag’ with emergency supplies, including medications and important documents.

My important documents are in a fire resistant safe or filing cabinet so I don’t need to worry about them in case of a fire.

Surprisingly we found out with the Palisades fire that this is yet another misconception as whole banks with safe deposit boxes in tow melted in the face of the fire onslaught. We reminded residents of the need to familiarize themselves with “the cloud” and to scan important documents to a reputable service such as Apple’s iCloud, Microsoft’s OneDrive or Google Drive. As a co-op, we store Shareholder stock certificates at the onsite office but are in the midst of scanning them all to the cloud should a fire rip through my office at some point in the future.

Our building is concrete and steel, we don’t have to worry about it catching fire.

While it is generally true that high rise buildings are much less likely to catch fire from a wildfire-kind of fire, it is not impossible. Almost half of the building that I currently manage caught fire back in 1989 when a fire erupted in the wood-frame apartment building being constructed next door. Even a concrete and steel high rise can indeed catch fire if a large enough fire is nearby! Thankfully all high rises are now required to be equipped with a fire sprinkler system, which would’ve helped back in 1989 had we had such a system.

While it’s easy to think that ‘it’ won’t happen to me, it’s much more prudent to be prepared. As a manager I also believe it is part of our responsibility to help our residents to be prepared. While they are ultimately responsible for their own safety, they will thank you for informing them and correcting any misconceptions they may have related to fires and high rise living.

Hamlet Vazquez, MCAM-HR, is the General Manager at Wilshire Terrace Co-Op in Los Angeles.