We were in Buenos Aires, Argentina, when we found out Hurricane Harvey was headed to Houston. We had traveled there for a risk assessment—assisting a client with evaluating the risks of various compliance subject matters in that market. In that moment, we had not fully appreciated the risk that a natural disaster could pose to our firm and way of working. Each day we watched as the forecast developed. When we arrived at the airport Friday night for our overnight flight, we were not sure whether we would make it back to Houston. As we were eating pizza in the Ezeiza International Airport in Buenos Aires watching scenes of Harvey’s path, two United Airlines pilots came to the counter and told us not to worry because we were getting home. That night, they flew around the massive storm and landed in Houston a few hours before the airport closed and Harvey inundated the city with water.
Our firm is small and our clients are dispersed around the globe. One of our colleagues had been in Denver for the weekend and stayed so she had access to power. One author was without power for several days and found herself frequenting a small restaurant close to her house called IndiEats to charge her computer and other devices. But, even without power or air conditioning, during the week of Harvey, our firm completed another risk assessment in Chile—conducting meetings through video conference and drafting risk assessment reports. Fortunately, none of our colleagues suffered flood damage, but we had plenty of friends and family who suffered tremendous losses, so we also spent time that week helping them. While local colleagues at other firms shared stories of significant business disruption because of closed offices and travel issues, we were fortunate and found that our way of operating largely independent from our office space near Rice University meant the weather had little impact on client deadlines or firm operations.
