Ice Storm 2016 Jan06

Ice Storm 2016

For the past several years, the southeastern United States has been slammed with ice storms in the first quarter. You can’t stop the ice from forming, but there are several steps that you can take to keep your leasing office staff as safe as possible. While weather forecasts are known to issue false alarms, ignoring a warning can lead to dangerous repercussions: impassable roads leave employees stranded at work and their kids stranded at school; fallen trees can cut power supplies. The weather warnings are not always accurate, but the cost of ignoring them may outweigh the benefits. Use these tips to guide your staff safely through ice storm season in the southeast. Ensure that snow and ice removal equipment is ready for action. Check that property management, vendors or maintenance staff have properly prepared for the season. This is especially important if the equipment needed is kept onsite and rarely used. Jack Drobny, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Troy-Bilt, offers maintenance tips for dormant machines. “If you try to start a snow thrower after it has sat for a while, it might not start,” he says frankly. “The first thing that you’ll want to do is remove the smart plug boot, ground it to the engine block, and clear away any external engine debris,” he says. Drobny then suggests adjusting the skid shoes and shave plate, which are particularly important for breaking up ice. Once those items are secured, Drobny recommends inspecting the belts for signs of damage, checking the oil and adding fresh fuel as needed. “By taking care of those things early, you won’t be left out in the cold.” Keep additional fuel, spare batteries, and chemical ice-melting products onsite when possible. Such supplies can make parking lots and sidewalks safer...

Small Gift, Big Impact Dec30

Small Gift, Big Impact...

Colleen Gray admits that when a frigid ice storm struck her hometown of Toronto, Ontario a few days before Christmas, she wasn’t prepared. “I had no flashlight, candles, tasty emergency food,” said the Business Applications Leader for Real Estate Management Services, a Yardi client. Her apartment lost power on Dec. 21 around 10 p.m. Nor did she realize that power was going to be out for more than three full days. The storm knocked out electricity and other services to 300,000 Toronto residents, and a few hundred were still without power as of this writing on Dec. 30. Anxious to have the most up-to-date information on weather conditions, expectations for the next few days how friends, family and colleagues were doing, Colleen was glued to her iPhone, which she hadn’t charged the night the power went out. “I was trying to get information from web sites, while at the same time rationing data access as I knew it drained the battery pretty fast,” she told us in an email. But Sunday morning, she was already below 50 percent of her battery and had no idea how much longer it would be out – service wasn’t restored until 6 p.m. on Dec. 24. Then she remembered – a tiny, battery powered iPhone charger was included in a gift for clients delivered at Yardi’s recent Canadian client appreciation dinner. “Brilliant!  This gave me enough juice to get through the day and evening. The next day I went to the office and was able to charge up both my iPhone and Portable charger to get me through another night.   It was a tremendous comfort knowing that I wasn’t going to run out of power when the only thing connecting me to information and friends and family was...