05 Profiles

Buckskin Artist Community Rises from the Ashes

For Rayetta and Al Eubanks, community officers and resident managers of Buckskin Artist Community, the fire was more than a story on the news. It was a life-altering event. With a mere 30-minute warning, residents of the community were evacuated from the area, told to take only the bare essentials before the fire reached their homes. In the rush, Rayetta and Al were able to grab two boxes of files, one containing current records for Buckskin Artist, and one containing personal records. 

Through the course of the day, the fire raged through the community, randomly picking and choosing its targets, with little care for the course it took. "I think the hardest thing was that we weren't able to get accurate information while we were evacuated as to what areas were actually burned and what areas weren't. It wasn't until we were almost ready to come back to the area before we knew that our home was gone." Says Rayetta. 

Returning home, Rayetta discovered the extent of the destruction. "There were just two or three streets in the community that were in the fire area; it just hit these few streets. On the street that we lived there were five houses that weren't burned, but the rest of them were. If you drive a quarter of a mile from our area you wouldn't know there'd been a fire. The fire was so hot. It actually did things like melt the glass [from the windows] instead of just breaking it. It was really, really a hot fire. There was just nothing left."

Picking up the pieces has not been easy for Rayetta. "We just got the mess cleaned up at this point so we won't [be able to start] to rebuild until early spring, because we have too much snow here to be able to do a lot of building." Not only have the Eubanks had to try to rebuild their personal life, Rayetta and Al have had to continue the everyday management of the community. Aside from the two boxes that they were able to rescue, all of their community records were lost to the blaze. 

Since Buckskin Artist had recently transitioned to TOPS 2000™ property management software, Rayetta contacted TOPS Software for help in recovering from the disaster. Cathy Flynn, corporate trainer for TOPS Software, listened to her story and discovered how much had been lost. "Rayetta told me how she had to go to the county records to find out who owned the property in their association since there were no records, and then had to track everyone down and find phone numbers, emails, and addresses." Since Buckskin Artist's is primarily a vacation community, most of the owners' primary mailing addresses are outside of the community. "This was a time consuming process and they were in a crunch. They needed help quick."

Alone, it would be a lengthy process for Rayetta to rebuild the community information from scratch, and with little data to work with it was an overwhelming job. "We stopped the conversation at one point and I offered her an option." Says Cathy, "I said that I would help her set up the community that weekend (this was a Wednesday) if she could fax over everything she had. It was 148 units with all alternate addresses. I received her information, and I went to work." Cathy proceeded to recreate records for the entire community including accounts receivable, general ledger, accounts payable, owners, charge tables, bank accounts, and vendors over the weekend. That Monday, Cathy connected to Rayetta's computer and transferred the files. "We got her setup from beginning to end. Within 5 days Buckskin Artist was ready to roll."

Buckskin Artist Community still has a long way to go to fully recover from this disaster, but Rayetta has had some positive results from the experience. "It's an experience that I hope no one else has to go through, obviously, but I think it makes you stronger any time you do go through something like this. If anything, it has drawn our community closer together. We've met a lot of people that we didn't know before, and have gotten closer to a lot of the people that we did know. It's just one of those things that happens. You just have to pick up and go on." 

Andrea Drennen is the Internet Services Manager for TOPS Software.

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