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Case study

The LaSalle Bank fire: How critical operations were available next day, strategic advantage leveraged and lessons learned

Jack T. Smith
Journal of Business Continuity & Emergency Planning, 1 (1), 55-64 (2006)
https://doi.org/10.69554/TKAV5254

Abstract

The worst high-rise building fire in the history of the City of Chicago occurred on 6th December, 2004 at 6.30pm at the LaSalle Bank head-quarters which houses 3,000 employees. Due to the efforts of the bank’s Business Continuity Team and the Business Continuity Coordinators within the building, critical operations were recovered by the morning of the next business day. Clients were not impacted. As the Business Continuity and Crisis Manager for the bank, Jack was charged with the effort of building a comprehensive programme that would be tested on the largest scale to date. In this paper he presents the valuable lessons learned from the event including what went well and what did not. The paper details how various areas within the organisation were involved in the recovery effort including facilities, human resources, security, insurance, computing infrastructure, life safety and crisis management. The result of tireless planning was that, despite over US$50m in damage to the building and most departments being displaced for weeks without prior notice, the company did not file a business interruption claim with its insurance company.

Keywords: LaSalle Bank fire; crisis management; business resiliency; marketing opportunity; lessons learned

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Author's Biography

Jack T. Smith is a First Vice President and Business Continuity Manager of ABN AMRO Bank, NV, which has its headquarters in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Jack is responsible for coordinating the business continuity efforts for the global holdings of ABN AMRO Services IT Division. He has also served as a co-chairman of the Illinois Terrorist Task Force’s Public/Private Partnership Committee. Jack has provided leadership during numerous incidents that disrupted the bank’s business. The most challenging were the Northeast power outage in 2003 (which impacted 80 per cent of LaSalle Bank’s Michigan-based operations) and the LaSalle Bank fire in 2004, which was the largest skyscraper fire in Chicago’s history, displacing more than 3,000 employees and causing more than US$50m in damage. Despite the magnitude of these and other events, the LaSalle Bank has never needed to file a business interruption claim with its insurance company during his tenure. Before joining ABN AMRO in 1993, Jack held IT infrastructure management positions in the distribution, service and healthcare industries.

Citation

Smith, Jack T. (2006, September 1). The LaSalle Bank fire: How critical operations were available next day, strategic advantage leveraged and lessons learned. In the Journal of Business Continuity & Emergency Planning, Volume 1, Issue 1. https://doi.org/10.69554/TKAV5254.

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cover image, Journal of Business Continuity & Emergency Planning
Journal of Business Continuity & Emergency Planning
Volume 1 / Issue 1
© Henry Stewart
Publications LLP

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