Allstate Gets Everyone Back To Work After Sept. 11Allstate Gets Everyone Back To Work After Sept. 11

Allstate Insurance Co. thought it had emerged relatively unscathed from the Sept. 11 tragedy. Its World Trade Center office was gone, but all employees got out safely. Then the calls started rolling in. Allstate had lost network communication for about 100 of its agencies in the New York area because of the fire in the building containing the Internet-access circuits, located in the shadow of the World Trade Center towers.

The Northbrook, Ill., insurer was prepared for network outages caused by natural disasters such as hurricanes, but not for as massive an outage as this. Allstate had 25 LAN-in-a-box dialup network kits made for such emergencies, but needed at least 75 more.

The IT group scrambled to get find a way to give each agency at least basic network access. Hardware and networking vendors could provide some equipment, but Allstate's IT staff had to use ingenuity for the rest.

Someone remembered that there were cabinets of returned equipment at a nearby warehouse that could be cannibalized. Four volunteers dug through the warehouse to pull the necessary parts from old machines. "They were in standard office dress. They came back pretty dirty with all of the equipment we could use," says Dave Hormel, an integration consultant in Allstate's network communication services, a group that played a central role in putting together the emergency systems.

Hormel's team assembled 24 rough-looking units-dubbed "LAN in a cardboard box" by the staff-and had them packed to ship on Wednesday, but conventional shipping proved impossible. Airlines were grounded, and ground carriers such as UPS couldn't guarantee any kind of immediate delivery. At 8 a.m. Wednesday, Allstate asked for volunteers to drive to New York to deliver the systems. By 8:20, 20 people had volunteered.

On Thursday afternoon, two technicians piled the 24 units in an Allstate-owned Ford Expedition and headed for New York. The drive to the Big Apple took 14 hours-and the last few miles through a shell-shocked New York took another four.

The 24 systems weren't enough. UUnet Technologies was able to get another 50 units to Allstate's Northbrook headquarters by Wednesday afternoon, but the units had to be assembled. Allstate set up a production line with everyone possible staying late to help the engineers put the boxes together. By 9 p.m., the boxes were configured and ready to go-a task that normally would have taken days. Those units went out late Thursday night, this time in a rented cargo truck with a professional driver.

Rather than making Allstate's IT staff more jittery, the emergency work served to ease peoples' minds and help them focus on their jobs. "It's part of the healing process when you feel like you can be part of the solution. It's like people giving blood," says Cathy Brune, Allstate's VP of infrastructure.

Allstate had all of its offices online by the following Monday, leaving the IT staff amazed at what they'd accomplished. As Hormel reports one person saying, "These are the times that legends are made."