When tragedy strikes, Belfor is ready and waiting to clean up the mess left behind. As the world’s largest disaster relief company, the company receives approximately 330,000 calls annually and has more than 12,000 employees worldwide equipped to deal with the aftermath of hurricanes, floods, terrorist attacks and more.
CEO Sheldon Yellen is currently in Florida – just a few weeks after hurricanes Helene and Milton devastated the state. That’s what he’s been doing for nearly four decades. Yellen and his team were there to pick up the pieces after the 9/11 terrorist attack, Hurricane Katrina and the 2011 Thailand floods, to name a few.
They could even be in Washington DC next week if the 2024 US presidential election goes wrong. It’s a scenario, says Yellen AssetsThe company is “ready” for this.
A quarter of Americans fear a civil war after the election
America at a crossroads. The presidential election is just days away, but the nation is pretty evenly divided about who should run the country: Donald Trump or Kamala Harris.
Add to that a pattern of rejection of election results, arguments about whether society is too “woke” or too conservative, and a growing distrust of real or fake news, and you have a recipe for potential disaster.
That may explain why polls show more than a quarter of Americans believe a civil war could break out after this year’s presidential election The times.
Twelve percent of respondents said they knew someone who might take up arms if they believed Donald Trump had been cheated out of victory. Five percent said they know someone who would do the same if they thought Kamala Harris was cheated.
“Of course we would initially hope that nothing would happen, but we are prepared to do whatever we are asked to do,” Yellen said. “We are ready for action at any time, 24/7, 365 days a year.”
To be clear, Belfor is prepared for such a scenario, not because it predicts that America is on the brink of unrest, but because that is the nature of the matter. For example, unlike many governments around the world, Belfor was prepared for a pandemic before COVID-19 struck.
“We have a responsibility to be ready to respond, and we have all the tools necessary to respond,” Yellen said.
“When this pandemic started, we had $1 million of inventory (of face masks) on our shelves, and people on the outside looking in would have said, ‘Sheldon, why do you have so many masks on the shelves?’ I can’t answer why that is, except in case we need it.”
Even if all hell breaks loose after a Harris or Trump victory, Belfor, as Yellen says, is ready.
What a civil war cleanup operation might look like
If there were unrest in the American capital – or elsewhere – Yellen said it would only take 60 minutes for the company to respond.
“Our command centers are ideally suited to be operational within an hour,” he says.
To be on the safe side, our satellite phones are constantly tested. Our generators are tested weekly…” he adds. “All our protocols are always valid because we never know when the call will come in and what exactly it is for. “
In the event of riots and mass civil disobedience, he says, the company is typically called upon to “conduct cladding of buildings that needed to be protected from intruders.”
“So we sent people out with products in their vehicles to actually do these board-ups. Sometimes there is a reason for the water withdrawal, all the equipment, all the generators that we would need to operate would be shipped.”
“As I said, we are prepared,” he concludes. “All of these materials and equipment we need for our response are in place and our personnel are ready to respond at any time.”
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