Well, as you may have heard, we had a devastating earthquake here in LA on
January 17.  As a result, the building that housed all of Research
Administration, as well as several labs, was condemned.  No one has been
allowed in the building since the quake.  Consequently, all of our files,
pending and active projects, archives, contracts in negotiation, notes,
sponsor info and guidelines, EVERYTHING has been trapped in that building
for nearly 3 months!!!

I bring this up because today, at long last, we will be allowed one hour to
rescue whatever we can before they tear the building down.

Now, putting aside the witty cracks about living in LA that will no doubt
be at each of your fingertips, you should recognize that disaster is not
exclusively Californian.  Hurricanes in Florida, floods in the midwest,
a fire can take out any building...  What would you do if you came in
tomorrow morning and your building wasn't there?

We had an SRA Southern California Chapter meeting focusing on this topic, and,
believe me, the ramifications of such a disaster are far too vast to list here
right now.  [for starters, we were crammed into new space, 6 to an office, with
no computers, no long distance phones, no calculators, no pens, and, of course,
a February 1 NIH deadline].

Anyway, the moral of the story is to have a good disaster plan, and, if possible
 , complete back-up of documents.  Hopefully, one of the trade journals will b
 e
publishing something about this, but if anyone is interested in more of the
gory details I'd be happy to expound.

Gotta go put my hardhard on!  Wish me luck!

Tony Silbert
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
Los Angeles, CA
xxxxxx@csmc.edu