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CHAPTER SEVEN | TWIN STORMS
repackaged into fresh boxes. Then, before shipping them back to New Jersey, which would be their new home, they were run through a nuclear reactor around a nuclear core to kill any microbes, mold, mildew or any other type of contaminants that could make the handling of them unsafe. Once in New Jersey—part of a long-term plan—the certificates would be housed in a vault on a higher floor. A staging area was created to receive the boxes and the painstaking process of reconciling the inventory began. “We did a complete vault inventory, and that’s when I can say with a certain degree of pride that 99.5 percent of the assets were fully recovered,” Femia said. “Some were damaged, some were in very poor condition. But in some shape, form or other, they were identified and placed back in the vault. Not DTCC nor the participants lost one single dime on any of the transactions.” There was just one hitch, however. The Jersey City vault filled up quickly and, when DTCC had received all of the restored and irradiated certificates, they did not fit. “We planned this so carefully,” said Susan Cosgrove, managing director, president of Clearing & Securities Services. “But if you think about what a piece of paper looks like after it has gotten wet versus a flat piece of paper, it takes up more volume. So by the time we got all 1.8 million certificates back into the vault, we ran out of room. Thankfully, the vault was designed to expand.” DTCC continued its recovery efforts into 2014 to address the unrecoverable certificates. It replaced those that were destroyed or damaged beyond repair and completed a full vault certificate audit to ensure accuracy and proper filing.
Susan Cosgrove, managing director, president of Clearing & Securities Services, explained why the 1.8 million certificates that were damaged inside the DTCC vault and later restored would not fit into the Jersey City vault even though it was designed to house the same number of certificates: Though the certificates had dried, the water damage expanded the paper’s volume.
Making Moves
Just as 9/11 had caused DTCC to expand its operations with the backup center in Tampa and relocation to Jersey City, Superstorm Sandy caused further conversations about resilience. Tampa was a natural site and plans were made to expand operations. The office would no longer just be a backup, but it could serve as DTCC’s headquarters should an event like Sandy happen again. The firm’s leadership was looking for employees from the New York office who were interested in relocating to Tampa to ensure DTCC had a strong presence there. When the Jersey City site opened in December—a move accelerated by the devastation in Lower Manhattan—about 1,700 DTCC employees were housed at the site. The expansion of the offices in Tampa and opening in Jersey City helped DTCC prepare for any new challenges that might come. ■
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