Wal-Mart copes with hurricanes

A wave of activity rippled through Wal-Mart's emergency operations center Friday morning as Hurricane Irma prepared to barrel into South Florida.

Employees coordinated plans for the potentially catastrophic storm, manning laptops and phones in the command center inside the Bentonville home office. Television monitors were tuned to news stations, while another screen showed live camera feeds from inside South Florida stores.

Meanwhile, Lucas McDonald, director of Wal-Mart's emergency operations center, stood in front of a large map that showed the hurricane's most up-to-date projected path and the number of stores bracing for impact.

"Last year, we had the flooding in Louisiana and then we went into Hurricane Matthew," McDonald said. "We thought that was busy. Looking back, that was a quiet time. ... This is busy."

McDonald and the rest of Wal-Mart's emergency operations center team -- which normally consists of 12 employees but can balloon to hundreds during disasters -- have been operating at a heightened pace for nearly three weeks thanks to the one-two punch from Hurricanes Harvey and Irma.

The first storm affected hundreds of Wal-Mart stores, and thousands of employees and customers in Houston and surrounding areas in Texas. Two stores in the state remain closed.

Irma is expected to wreak similar havoc across Florida this weekend. As of 5 p.m. Friday, 94 Wal-Mart stores had been closed. Wal-Mart estimates as many as 400 locations and 97,000 employees could be affected by the storm.

Through it all, the emergency operations center in the home office serves as the hub for Wal-Mart's preparation and response to the major hurricanes. Employees across multiple divisions like replenishment, merchandising, logistics, asset protection and human resources work to make sure supplies are routed to the affected areas, employees are safe, and stores reopen as quickly as possible to help customers get needed items.

[HURRICANE TRACKER: Follow Irma’s projected path]

"We have incredible expertise here in Bentonville," said McDonald, who was a television weatherman before joining Wal-Mart to work in its emergency operations center 10 years ago. "So we pull together almost an all-star cast, if you will, to help us get through whatever disaster we have."

ORIGINS IN 9/11

Wal-Mart's emergency operations center -- in its current form -- was born out of the terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, and the recognition that the global retailer needed to be able to "rally a lot of different elements of the company together quickly," according to Jason Jackson, the retailer's senior director of emergency management.

He said it wasn't until the 2004 hurricane season, when Florida was hit by multiple storms, that it became a 24-hour operation within the company. Jackson ran the emergency operations center from 2004-08.

In 2005, Wal-Mart earned praise for its quick response in getting truckloads of food, water and other supplies to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the region. The company has since worked closely with emergency operations in states like Florida and Texas to help improve coordination for disaster-relief efforts.

Hurricanes and other natural disasters like wildfires and earthquakes -- including one that shook Mexico on Friday and affected 24 Wal-Mart locations -- are big events constantly monitored in the center. But the department also coordinates responses to store events like fires, shootings or chemical spills.

"Every day, just because of our size, we're dealing with day-to-day emergencies," Jackson said. "So the company has this mechanism in place to manage and handle and provide resource and support to take care of it. This center itself is really a connection and coordination framework for quick action."

The center operates around an alert status that ranges from levels 4 to 1.

Level 4 is considered normal operations. Level 3 can be a weather incident like an ice storm.

Hurricanes are typically categorized as Level 2 events, while Level 1 is reserved for catastrophes.

"We are at Level 2," McDonald said Friday morning. "But this is very close to being a Level 1 event and depending on what happens after landfall we may escalate there."

The primary objective before a storm is to make sure as many essentials as possible -- like water, batteries, bread and other supplies -- are available for customers. Keeping shelves stocked has been challenging for retailers throughout the region as residents heeded calls to prepare for Irma.

Wal-Mart said Thursday that it was responding to the growing demand by routing additional truckloads of water, pallets of batteries and other supplies to the region.

"We're working to get everyone as much as possible through our vast network," Michael Black, Wal-Mart's director of merchandise execution, said Friday. "We've shipped 1,080 trucks to Georgia, Florida and some of South Carolina. That's just emergency supplies not including our normal network."

Wal-Mart stores and distribution centers in the path of the hurricane stay open as long as possible, but the company began to close locations Friday to give employees time to evacuate. McDonald said he expected most of Wal-Mart's locations in South Florida to close by the end of the day Friday.

Once the storm passes, Wal-Mart will move to reopen stores as quickly as possible.

"Everything has a rhythm to it and the way that it works," Jackson said.

1ST PRIORITY: WORKERS

The first priority is the company's employees. Wal-Mart will check on its workers after a storm to make sure they're all right. Employees also have access to a hotline to communicate any needs.

McDonald said the company has even remained in constant communication with two employees who were on vacation in the Turks and Caicos and couldn't get out before the storm made landfall.

Wal-Mart then does a damage assessment of its stores. Disaster response teams are positioned nearby and move into the affected areas to determine which stores are damaged and which ones are able to reopen. A green light on the screen in the emergency operations center in Bentonville indicates an open location, while a red light denotes a closed store.

Meanwhile, Wal-Mart is preparing as many supplies as possible to move into affected areas after the storm. The mix of merchandise is adjusted to include recovery items like chain saws, tarps and generators as Wal-Mart utilizes a network that includes six disaster-specific distribution centers in the Southeast.

"We're still doing it with Harvey," said senior merchandise support manager Virginia Higginbotham. "We haven't forgotten those folks and continue to support them as well. When you've got two major areas, you're pulling [merchandise] from further and further away to make sure you're able to support both areas."

But Wal-Mart is confident it will withstand another challenge as it works closely with government officials and disaster relief organizations like the Red Cross to make sure residents' needs are met.

On Friday, the company and the Walmart Foundation also said it would commit at least $1 million for Hurricane Irma relief, and the figure could increase as the storm plows through Florida. The company and foundation already have pledged up to $20 million for Hurricane Harvey relief in the Gulf region.

"We've got grit," Black said about Wal-Mart's emergency response team. "If you get down to it, you've got the best of the best in this room that will work together to make it happen. There's not much in this room that we can't do. So when we need to make something happen the right people are in here and we can find the resources."

Business on 09/09/2017