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Member, Beacon International Group, Ltd.
The damage inflicted by hurricanes the past few years has risk managers, especially those in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast regions, putting a higher premium on mitigating flood risks on commercial properties, said Brion Callori, Providence, R.I.-based senior vice president for engineering and research at FM Global.
Risk managers can take control by understanding the risks of their buildings and build resilient facilities, Mr. Callori said. “People are aware that the risk is real. I think that there is a lot of momentum building for mitigating against flood exposures.”
To guard against damage from flooding, risk managers are exploring acquisitions of flood-resistant doors and barriers and taking even more drastic steps such as repositioning data centers to upper floors of structures in order to keep valuable equipment above flood plains and avoid losses, Mr. Callori said.
“It's amazing what clients are willing to do when they realize they have an exposure,” he said. “People are now raising equipment up in buildings and developing flood response plans.”
Nonetheless, Mr. Callori cautioned that risk managers should not fixate on just one type of loss and should instead be prepared for a broad range of perils.
“One of the key things to remember is that while Hurricane Irene was a big inland flooding event and Superstorm Sandy was a big coastal flooding event, we still haven't seen a big wind event in the Northeast,” he said.