In an instant, more than 900 clubs went dark and silent, confronting owners with a mind-boggling challenge - which they met
by Stephen Wallenfels
Bill Soens, the general manager at the Fitness Works, in Detroit, had vacation on his mind. It was 4:09 p.m. on Thursday, August 14, and everything appeared to be 'business as usual' on a gorgeous late-summer afternoon. Soens was just getting ready to walk out the door when, at 4:10 p.m., his vacation plans were put on temporary hold—along with the assorted plans of some 60 million other Americans.
The lights in his 42,000 square-foot club flickered once or twice—then went out. Soens figured it was nothing extraordinary—a local power outage seemed the most likely cause—until he tried to call the engineering crew and discovered that the phone lines were dead. Finding that a little odd, he looked out a window at the buildings across the street—people were emerging from their powerless offices, looking as puzzled as he was.
A few minutes later, a member came in and delivered the shocking news. 'He told us that the power outage was widespread and had affected a number of the major cities in the East,' Soens recalls. 'At that point, we all thought the same thing: we wondered if there had been another terrorist attack.'
At about the same time, some 380 miles to the northeast, Jackie Lesarge was driving to the GoodLife Fitness Center in Kingston, Ontario, where she works as a customer service representative. Lesarge wasn't thinking about terrorists, but she did wonder why none of the streetlights were working—until the news came on. When she reached the club, she told the curious staff what she’d heard on the car radio: that it wasn’t what they'd assumed—a local power outage—but, rather, a massive blackout involving many of the largest cities in Canada and the eastern U.S. 'No one was really worried,' says Lesarge, who had planned on getting in an off-duty workout, but had to shelve her plans. 'We were hearing a lot of different things . . . We just weren’t sure what to believe.'
Meanwhile, at the headquarters of CRUNCH Fitness International on 26th Street, in New York City—which still recalled vividly the events surrounding September 11, 2001—communication with the chain's 10 New York facilities had been lost: instantaneously.
The company's executive team—Jim Solomon, CEO; Roger Harvey, COO; Rick Bouza, vice president of sales; Janet Woodfin, New York area director; and Aimee Morris, retail director—didn't waste a minute or a movement. They immediately instituted an emergency action plan that had been battle-tested on 7/11 and went to work. Two teams were formed: each with the goal of surveying and communicating with the affected clubs.
Harvey, Woodfin, and Morris navigated the streets of lower Manhattan in Harvey's car, while Solomon and Bouza embarked on a three-mile trek uptown on foot. The city's streets were choked with stranded pedestrians by the time the two groups reached their first club. The message they delivered: Evacuate the clubs quickly, efficiently, and safely. Complete a formal shutdown of the power supply and HVAC units to prevent residual damage when service was restored. Managers were to remain at the clubs, on standby, pending the end of the blackout. The staff was to go home, but asked to return to work when the lights came back on.
And that was how it went, that was how it was done—strictly according to plan, and without incident or mishap.
'During 9-11,' Woodfin recalls, 'there was panic in the city, but it was somewhat localized, and, although difficult, it was still possible to communicate. In this case, it was a complete shutdown—no cell phones, no subways, no traffic lights. It was an amazing thing to see, and an incredible thing to experience,' she adds. 'Every horizontal surface in New York was occupied by someone who was stranded for the night: businessmen in suits were sleeping on park benches.'
By sundown, the streets of a city with a population of 8 million were virtually empty.
A photograph taken that night, from a satellite, of the eastern United States and southeastern Canada shows a continent with a gaping black hole where huge population centers—e.g., Manhattan, Detroit, Cleveland, Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa—usually sparkle like clusters of brightly lit diamonds. In less than 10 seconds, starting at 3:06 p.m., more than 100 power plants were shut down and 61,800 megawatts of power disappeared, triggering the worst blackout in the history of North America. Some 60 million Americans and 10 million Canadians were affected and inconvenienced, but soon adapted and improvised, and, when it was all over, took some satisfaction in how well they'd responded to the emergency.
And eBay did a good business in its instant memorial T-shirts, which read 'New York Unplugged' and 'No Power to the People!'
IHRSA estimates that as many as 200 clubs lost power as a result of the outage. Fortunately, it began during the day, so facilities with windows weren't plunged into total darkness, facilitating orderly exits and, for the most part, uneventful closings. For a few clubs, however, things weren't quite so prosaic.
Heather Neskas, the general manager of a women-only GoodLife Fitness Center located inside a mall in London, Ontario, was in an office, talking with a member of her sales staff, when the lights went out. 'All of a sudden, it was completely black,' she recalls. 'My first thought was that we needed to make sure that everyone was okay—people on treadmills or lifting heavy weights are at risk when the power shuts off.' But a quick check by her staff indicated that there were no problems, no accidents. Employees were disturbed only by the strange sensation of working in a facility where the only source of illumination was the eerie glow of emergency lights.
'But the club really quieted down,' Neskas reflects. 'Once the initial shock wore off, it was almost romantic.'
David Patchell-Evans, the founder and president of the GoodLife chain, notes that all but five of his 70 clubs were affected by the blackout, temporarily interrupting service for some 200,000 members. Although power was restored to most locations in Canada the following day, on August 15, the Province of Ontario lingered in a state of emergency for nearly a week. Many businesses chose to remain closed during that period—particularly when there still wasn't any electrical service—but GoodLife elected to keep its doors open: both for the company's and members' benefit.
One local newspaper was critical of his stance, but Patchell-Evans stands by his decision. 'I believe we provide an essential service to the community,' he explains. 'During the state of emergency, we turned off all the equipment that consumes a lot of energy, such as treadmills, saunas, and whirlpools, and used reduced lighting in our group exercise classes.' He points, with pride, to the fact that there wasn't a single blackout-related injury at any of the 70 clubs, and says many members have expressed their appreciation for his having kept the clubs open.
CRUNCH had a similar objective—like GoodLife, it wanted to get its clubs up and running as quickly, and as safely, as possible: for a number of reasons. Its members were anxious to return to their workouts, and, when it comes to sales, August 15 is one of the biggest mid-month closeouts of the year.
Pablo Jimbo, the chain's area facility supervisor, had worked tirelessly to make sure that all of the affected systems were shut down properly so that they'd be ready when the power came back on. Early Friday morning, service was restored to the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and CRUNCH's 83rd Street facility became the mission-control and nerve center for its New York clubs. The company's corporate staff converged on the site, with Solomon and other key personnel manning telephones, updating staff, and generating status reports.
Woodfin was genuinely impressed with how well the organization, top to bottom, responded to the challenge. 'We conduct emergency-response training sessions on a monthly basis; but, even so, the whole situation was handled beautifully,' she reports. 'Nobody panicked, and, on Saturday, when full power was restored—it was back to ‘business as usual.'
Stephen Wallenfels is a contributing editor for CBI and can be reached at stevewall@charter.net.
