Hurricanes are just part of the equation when living and working in Florida. After five years as an engineering manager at two Marriott properties in the state, Catherine Antenucci has learned this all too well.
And while some Floridians might choose to downplay hurricanes, the native New Yorker is not one of them.
“I’ve always lived by, ‘Be prepared than under-prepared',” says Antenucci, the assistant director of engineering at Fort Lauderdale Marriott Harbor Beach Resort & Spa. “You can live your whole life in Florida and not have a direct hit, but I’m not going to be the one to take that chance.”
As Florida and other southern states were reminded of last month, powerful hurricanes leave behind a trail of death and destruction, as well as recovery costs that climb into the billions of dollars and change communities and institutional and commercial facilities forever.
Fort Lauderdale avoided most of the hurricane damage from Helene and Milton this time, but if the next named storm hits Fort Lauderdale, Antenucci and her team say they will be ready.
While Florida’s hurricane season runs from June to November, storms outside those months also pack punches, as Antenucci learned in April 2023.
The local CBS station in Fort Lauderdale called the storm a “1-in-1,000 years rainfall event” for South Florida when commemorating the one-year anniversary of the historic rainfall on April 13, 2023.
While hurricane season starts in June, South Florida’s rainy season starts in March, and this extended rainfall in April 2023 dropped 25 inches of rain on the city in 12 hours.
This rainstorm did not have any name attached to it, but by the time it was over, it inflicted plenty of damage.
“For our city, that resulted in flash floods throughout the beach and most of downtown,” says Antenucci, a 2024 Facility Champion.
For Antenucci’s property, it resulted in potential disaster. The Marriott Harbor Beach Resort & Spa is an 887,670-square-foot hotel and convention center with 650 guest rooms, 14 meeting rooms, three ballrooms and a two-level parking garage.
The force of the water on the resort’s property collapsed all three of the resort’s water outfalls, resulting in heavy flooding in the parking garages and cabana parking lot. For a 40-year-old property in the middle of a major renovation, that level of rainfall could have been more damaging had it expanded past the parking lots.
“That was a huge challenge, and nobody was expecting it,” Antenucci says. “But we did discover during the rainfall that our storm drains outfalls leading to a canal collapsed.”
To immediately alleviate the flooding, Antenucci’s team stationed trash pumps at two storm manhole drains that pumped out the drains mechanically and discharged the water into the nearby canal.
“We had to do this for most of the rain we received in South Florida, which from March to November is nearly every day,” she says about the temporary solution. “We did this not only to minimize water reaching the building but to try and keep guest interruption to a minimum as they would have had to walk through a few inches of water to get to their vehicles.”
The process of pumping the water out of the lots was a challenging task.
“We did have the trash pumps on hand, so we popped up the manhole cover, and we started pumping it out mechanically, and we were able to discharge it to the canal on its own,” Antenucci says. “I’m not saying that fixed our problem, but that took a lot of water off our hands.
“The rainfall we would get during the rain season was so heavy that we would need the two pumps to keep up with the rain we were receiving. We still had guests in house, and they’re not going to walk through 3 inches of water just to get to their car.”
The noise disruptions from the pumps were not always pleasant for the guests at the resort, but as Antenucci says, they were better than the alternative.
While the April 2023 rainfall was described as a rare event, Marriott was determined not to let another extreme storm possibly do even more damage to the property the next time a storm passed through Fort Lauderdale.
While the trash pumps helped alleviate the initial flooding, the resort sought other options to ensure a longer-term remedy. The resort worked with the city to enlarge the discharge pipes when replacing the damaged pipes.
While installing the new outfall system, the resort and contractors had to work with organizations already signed on to hold events at the Marriott property. This collaboration was especially important since one of the outfalls that needed to be repaired was located close to the convention center’s entrance.
“With check in for groups, we just had to manage it better with security checkpoints so they could direct traffic a little better,” Antenucci says. “After it was installed, we just had frequent check backs to make sure nothing collapsed.”
Further checks of the system revealed another water main break on the premises — a 4-inch PVC pipe had failed from the extra strain during the excavation for the repair, but that was quickly remedied.
“It helps to know your property, and immediately as it broke, our great landscaping team was monitoring it and called me right away,” she says. “We knew where all the shutoffs were and had that leak contained probably within five minutes on both ends of the break.”
The resort has not experienced flooding issues since April 2023, but Antenucci says she refuses to take anything for granted when it comes to keeping her facility, its guests and her team safe.
“For the most part, we feel pretty good that this is an issue that we’re past,” she says. “I wouldn’t say we really worry too much about the storms, but we also prep for them. I don’t want our team to worry because that’s when we could have a slip in service at the time we’re dealing with anything that could go wrong.”
Antenucci helps manage a team of 25 people split between engineering and landscaping. They take care of daily operations and are the main point of contact for other departments and regularly walk the property to check for potential issues.
Marriott uses protocols and special training for its staff to respond to emergency situations. New employees receive disaster response training during onboarding, as well as examples of worst-case scenarios and ways to deal with them.
“We say, prepare for the worst,” Antenucci says. “No matter what level of engineering tech we have, we make sure that they know at least 90 percent of what they need to do.
“Sometimes, a moment might get technicians during training, and they might freeze a bit, but that’s why we try to prepare them and test them during non-emergency times because you never know when it can happen.”
Dave Lubach is executive editor of the facilities market. He has more than nine years of experience writing about facility management and maintenance issues.
