10 Years Ago: The Necker Fire

10 years ago this month, sat in the British Virgin Islands offices of our IT startup Fresh Mango - I started getting messages about a fire on Necker Island.?What followed was one of many moments I was really proud of our little business and how we ran it.

Initially, our thoughts were on the staff & friends on the island but it was soon confirmed everyone was safe.?Shortly after, I got a call from?Samantha Cox?- Richard Branson's PA/miracle worker - asking if we could help them: the island was without Internet and had limited tech/telephony because the server room was a melted mess of hot metal.?This made sorting passports, flights, hotels, etc. impossible.

Team Fresh Mango jumped in to action with myself,?Fiona McKay,?Dominic Bufton?and?Ramiro Tarrico Villafa?e?arranging (sea) transport, gathering tools, cabling, laptops and anything else we might need (no Radio Shack nearby!).

My next call was to?Alan Bates, then CEO of Digicel, and went something like this:

Me: Alan, Necker fire, we're heading there to help, they have no phones, can you do anything?

Alan: I'll send someone to you with a box of charged phones and prepaid sim cards with credit within the hour.

Me: Amazing thanks!?Don't Digicel have a cell tower on Necker?

Alan: Yes we do, out in the sticks . . .

Me (sceptical voice): Is it possible to reprogram it to provide a broadband connection somehow?

Alan: (Muffled talking at his end).?Yep one of the engineers can pipe broadband to a network port at the base.

Me: Bloody hell, that's brilliant.??

I realise: we're gonna need a bigger cable.

Within a few hours, we're on a boat to Necker Island with a box of tech and a dastardly plan.?We land and split up, doing whatever we can with phones, PCs while getting a wireless network setup in ring of tents/teepees that served as base camp.

Dominic Bufton?headed off in to the wilderness with a machete, a toolbox and a roll of CAT5 cable towards the mobile tower.

Surreally, at lunch time I found myself having a cup of tea with Sam and Richard Branson in a teepee who were both so welcoming / accomodating given what they'd been through.

Thanks to the hardwork and ingenuity of the team, lots of duct tape, a machete, Digicel/Alan's generosity and some graft we were able to get Necker guests & staff up and operational before sunset.

Oddly, I think my proudest moment was when we asked if we could do anything else before we left, Sam joked 'only if you can fix washing machines' - without a word, the tools came back out and we had a crack at those too.

From the moment we got the call, no-one involved asked about overtime, payment, equipment, etc - people were in need and there was enough universal trust to know everything would sort itself out.

The moral of the story??I guess it's that in a crisis, good relationships let you focus on what needs to be done and let trust/karma sort out the rest.?That and you can never have enough duct tape.