Fire, Flood or Blood – Dealing with Disasters at HOAs

Episode Blog

TOM: Okay, well, thanks for joining me again on CACMChat, HOA Life Podcast, where no HOA topic is off limits. Today, I want to talk to you about emergency and disaster preparedness. As I sit here and talk to you on this episode, I am looking at a hill on fire in Trabuco Canyon in Orange County, California, literally on fire. The sky is just filled with smoke. Now, how do you prepare for these? It’s a little difficult. And what kind of emergencies do you prepare for? Outside of all of them? Now, there’s tons and tons of different disasters that can happen, natural and manmade. Earthquakes, fires, erosion and landslides, storms, chemical spills, explosions such as gas tanks, mass casualty incidents which we hope is never the case, and structure failures and floods. These are just to name a few. Now I have had the pleasure of representing many different sizes and styles of homeowner associations across the United States. In the HOA industry, a term is often used related to emergencies, which is fire, flood or blood, and I have, very unfortunately, had to manage my fair share of emergency responses in all of those categories. All of these, all of these, affect a community and the manager that manages that community.

Disasters, natural or man-made, occur regularly and without warning, at any time of the day or night. There are many ways a disaster can negatively impact an HOA and your residents, with many residents being displaced. Buildings or amenities needing repairs or complete restoration and reserve funds could be easily and entirely wiped out. Now I recognize that I’m referencing worst case scenarios, and many listeners might be saying to yourself “yeah, that’s pretty bad, but not likely going to happen in my community.”  Well, I have news for you it can. It does happen all too frequently. Look at the Paradise fires in Northern California that wiped out an entire community, friends of mine’s homes gone. Or the Champlain Towers in Florida that collapsed. Or the fires that I’m literally looking at right this minute. Again, worst cases, right, maybe not. Let me tell you about a community near Los Angeles in California that is experiencing land shifts. More than 200 homes in a city adjacent to Los Angeles have had their gas and power cut off by a long-running ground shift which is threatening utility lines. Now, granted, this is an oceanfront HOA community that has been under a local state of emergency since October 2023. Now, many of you listening may not be impacted by oceanfront disasters or anything even remotely near the ocean, but that doesn’t mean it can’t happen to your community, and I quote a city council member, “This is unprecedented. No one knows really, in a way, what to do.” Now, the gas and electric outage is indefinite because the shifting ground threatens utility poles and raises the risk of fires in the city. Again, I’d like to quote Councilmember David Bradley. “The move has accelerated dramatically over the last 12 months. Where some areas are moving,” now get this. “Some areas are moving up to 10 inches a week. You can almost see the ground move.”

Folks, heed evacuation warnings. Do not be the one that says, in the event let’s just say of a fire and you’re being asked to evacuate, again because I’m staring at this. Don’t be that guy that says, “nah, I’ll stay behind and spray my roof off with my garden hose,” because your family would lose you. We don’t want that to happen. Please heed evacuation warnings at all costs.

Now, governmental and public safety agencies have comprehensive plans for responding to disasters. Businesses like CACM have formal plans for responding to disasters or emergencies, particularly when their employees’ business continuity could be compromised. Now most HOAs, however, do not have any formal plans or specialized training in responding to a disaster. We need to change that. We need to elevate this industry. Some HOAs have rules and procedures that regulate disaster-related board responsibilities, usually regarding the expenditure of HOA money, and a civil code in California regulates emergency special assessments and borrowing from reserve funds. So, for a shameless plug in this difficult topic, I will be releasing an upcoming episode podcast in early October, once legislative bills in California are signed or vetoed by the governor at the end of September, specific to the topic of emergency assessment and expenditures of reserve funds and some legislation that helps this emergency process that I was heavily involved in negotiating. I’m hoping the governor signs this bill, but I’ll come back to that in a future episode.

So, questions that you should consider under emergencies, how specifically will the management or board communicate the emergency to the owners, and the residents. Keep in mind, while homeowner associations and managers are responsible to the owners, and the owners are typically responsible to their tenants. In the event of an emergency, you absolutely want to communicate to everyone, homeowners and residents. Is everyone in the community evacuated if necessary and safe. You must follow through. Is there anyone that is not ambulatory that needs help? Now for me, this is important for any community to be aware in order to help people that need help. It’s not hard to establish, especially in a condo, high-rise, I’m appreciating in single-family homes this might be a different circumstance, but in mid-rise, high-rise communities you probably want to keep an eye on this. There’s a lot of people in the event of an emergency that can’t walk down flights of stairs. Just keep track. Are there any vacant units? These problems could come from a vacant unit. Can residents access their property? Wait until it’s signed off on. Please don’t let people just randomly get back into their apartments or their homes after an emergency. Is the property even safe to access?

So, emergencies and disasters are dramatic, and we have to be prepared as a community in this industry. We have to be prepared as a community in this industry. We have to be prepared to address them. The best way to prepare is to set a plan in advance, put it on paper, make sure your board and make sure your community is aware of that plan. In high rises, you have the loudspeakers through the fire systems. Communicate to your residents what’s going on. Now, the questions that I just asked are all vital questions that you should know answers to in advance, just to address the immediate needs and safety of the residents in almost any community. But beyond the basics, the response to any emergency can vary dramatically depending on the HOA. As an example, the emergency response to a fire in a single-family homeowner association is dramatically different than that same emergency in a high-rise condo.

Have the emergency response contacts immediately available at all times, not just the obvious 911 call, but the company that you’ll need to help mitigate the emergency and prepare for restoration. Always have those people readily available. Always have that contact information readily available. For the industry partner members of CACM. I know that they are ready to help. That’s why they are partners. Utilize them. Have the insurance company contact available. While definitely not the first call in an emergency, always bring them in early into the conversation because the later you wait, the harder it will be to file claims. Advise your homeowners. If an emergency is affecting their individual unit. Have them contact their insurance companies and let the insurance companies mitigate these damages under subrogation and figure out responsibilities. Have legal counsel contact information available because you’re almost assured there will be legal action in some fashion or another. Be prepared for reserve expenditures under emergency conditions. Know what that process is. This is a key one for me. Hold a town hall meeting to address the concern or the emergency, share the necessary information and gather information.

I’ve held them in emergency conditions, literally two weeks before Christmas. I had a major flood in a luxury, high-rise building two weeks before Christmas and we had to hold town hall meetings right through the holidays to be able to share information and gather information. Again, I’ve held them. So, I know this will be awkward and it’ll be uncomfortable, but it’s extremely important to make sure that you communicate with your residents and allow them the opportunity to share information with you.

Look, if you’re a community manager, you have to remember that HOA board members are volunteer owners with little or no experience in managing emergency responses. So, what role would a community manager play in all of this? What role, if you are a manager, do you play? Well, to me, you’re the facilitator, you’re the communicator. Bottom line is in any emergency, you, as a manager, are the leader. I’m going to leave you with that. I can go on all day talking emergencies. I’m going to leave you with that. Please make sure you follow us on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Please don’t hesitate to send me some notifications, some interesting topics that you’d like to share, some stories, some fun or scary stories that you’d like to share to podcast@cacm.org. Until the next time, thanks for joining me.

OUTRO: And that concludes this week’s episode of CACMChat: HOA Life. Have questions you want answered? Send them to podcast@cacm.org and we’ll address them in an upcoming episode. Make sure to regularly check out our website at cacm.org and don’t forget to join our rapidly expanding social media community. Just follow @cacmchat on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and X. Thanks for joining me.