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

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.