As you may know, London commemorated the 350^th anniversary of the Great Fire of London in September this year with a recreation model set ablaze on the Thames. At Firefly, we had our own commemoration too – albeit a little unplanned.

On a fairly typical Monday morning at 8am on September 12, we arrived at our Soho Street office to be greeted by six fire trucks, 35 firemen, and lot of caution tape. Thankfully it wasn’t a Samsung Galaxy to blame, but rather a server room in the top floor of the building, owned by another company.

It was of course a tense time, and for CEO Claire who received an “er, the office is on fire” call at 8am on a Monday morning, a good test of action plans and fact-finding. Fortunately, if there’s anything that could be good about the situation, the fire broke out at 5.30am and was put out before anyone was in the building, and our insurance plan kicked in immediately. We assessed what we knew was in the office and any damaged equipment has been replaced.

While not as geographically large as the Great Fire of London, the little fire that tore through our offices was equally destructive, meaning we have been displaced and are still in a temporary office in Paddington one month on. Luckily though, crisis communications and disaster recovery are part of our remit, and we were back online remotely within an hour, conducting business as usual. We love the cloud! We’re also relieved to know we can manage our own crisis communications as well as other people's.