At RiverRock Real Estate Group, our Earthquake Emergency Response Protocol is designed to alert you to any damage before you have to call in. Here’s how this system worked during the recent 7.1 magnitude earthquake out of Ridgecrest, CA.

The Friday night earthquake rocked Southern California and was felt throughout Los Angeles, Riverside and Orange counties. The jolt was strong enough to trigger our Emergency Response Protocol, which is enacted at an earthquake measuring 5.0 and above.

Within 10 minutes of the earthquake, a region-wide Emergency Protocol message was sent via Agility, RiverRock’s emergency communication service.  As detailed in our protocol, all employees in the region were required to contact their supervisor or the appropriate backup.  Regional supervisors in Northern California and Arizona were alerted and provided additional support as needed.

The first objective is to ensure that the employees and their families are safe. The second objective is to alert teams to begin the property verification process by calling onsite personnel and personally inspecting each of their properties. Since the earthquake took place in the evening hours, onsite inspections were delayed until daylight Saturday morning, for safety reasons.

By noon Saturday, the majority of properties had been inspected and status updates were sent to the individual client contacts and RiverRock’s executive staff.  RiverRock’s construction management team responded as well and stood ready to lend assistance and coordinate any services needed.
At the end of the event, we were relieved to report that the impact of the quake was minimal with little damage reported. The few issues reported included: numerous elevators that went into safety mode (by design); some minor parking lot cracking; and ceiling tile movement.

RiverRock’s emergency protocol system is highly redundant with no downtime or loss of software because of its out-of-state redundancy back up. This ensures that our communication can reach employees and clients even if local systems go down.

The bottom line is that we are there before you have to call us. We are ready and working when emergencies happen, making RiverRock the right choice when it matters.