Lower Manhattan quiet as sandy shuts one-third of offices

Oshrat Carmiel and David M. Levitt in Bloomerg News reported on Manhattan's devastated financial district: ....damage from Hurricane Sandy is keeping properties empty more than a week after the storm struck. There are 445 office and residential properties in the area that the city determined may be uninhabitable even while they may have no structural damage. Almost 33 percent of the 101 million square feet (9.4 million square meters) of lower Manhattan office space was out of operation as of Nov. 7, according to brokerage Jones Lang LaSalle Inc.

Work crews continue to clean-up the wreck left behind by Atlantic superstorm Sandy. The sound of generators, garbage truck compactors, shuffling brooms and utility technicians are prominent sights and sounds throughout lower Manhattan.  “We have water in basically every building downtown,” said Joseph Moinian, who owns and manages more than 4 million square feet of commercial and residential space in the area. “I was always taught that salt water kills germs,” Moinian said. “Now I find out that it kills equipment too.”

The flooding in lower Manhattan after the biggest Atlantic storm in history is displacing workers at companies including American International Group Inc. (AIG) and Morgan Stanley (MS) as landlords drain basements, remove debris and repair electrical equipment. In the aftermath, commercial property values and leasing demand may fall while insurance premiums could rise.

“Lower Manhattan was just starting to come back to a very solid footing,” said Howard Lutnick, chairman and chief executive officer of investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald LP. His firm is a tenant at 199 Water St., where a flooded basement will take six to eight weeks to clean up, he said. “This is going to have a material effect on values downtown,” said Lutnick, who also runs BGC Partners Inc., owner of property brokerage Newmark Grubb Knight Frank....

The South Ferry Subway station after Sandy, shot by Metropolitan Transportation Authority of the State of New York, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Asia's top business leaders establish key disaster reduction partnership

Brigitte Leoni in the UNISDR News Archive: Some of Asia's most influential business leaders today agreed to adopt Business Continuity Management (BCM) as a first step towards safeguarding their businesses against disasters.  Some 30 CEOs and top managers based in the Philippines and Asia who gathered today in Manila in the Philippines also established the first regional Asian Private Sector Partnership on Risk Reduction.

The experience of the AXA insurance group, PricewaterhouseCoopers and many other corporations in the region set the tone for discussions and decisions today as did the reality that businesses are at increasing risk of disasters in Asia. Last year floods, typhoons and earthquakes caused more than 274 billion US$ of economic losses in Asia alone.

"As we grow in business we should not lose focus on earning respect from our communities. We can do it by strengthening disaster resilience. Your role may not be immediately recognized by communities but you can be sure of their gratitude and appreciation when disasters strike" said Hans Sy, President of SM Prime Holdings who convened the Top leader forum together with the UN office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR).

..."BCM is a great way for businesses to demonstrate that they are robust as well as safe and to reassure their shareholders and partners", said James Crask, a senior manager at Pricewaterhouse Coopers, who made a full simulation to the SM staff in the afternoon.  "But BCM needs to be of good quality, understood by staff, supported by board management, financially sustained and delivered as part of the organization general approach to risk," Crask stressed.

..."It's obvious that today any supply chain depends on another one and collaboration between corporations at national, regional and global levels is key to minimizing disaster losses. You don't have to be close to a hazard to be affected by a disaster," said Jerry Velasquez, UNISDR regional coordinator for the UNISDR Asia Pacific Office. "This is why it's important to build alliances and partnerships to considerably reduce global disaster losses as they continue to rise," he added....

Flooded bridge on west side of Prapa canal, just outside Bangkok border, October 31, 2011. (VOA)