One note about UPS units: I have seen at least one model that, once off, will not power back up unless it senses AC mains power. Most UPS are meant only to give you a few minutes to save your work and power down in an orderly manner, so the intent appeared to be to prevent you from inadvertently booting up on battery power only to die shortly.

Now is the time to determine if the one under your desk works that way.

Scafool, you were wrong only in thinking you were wrong. The scenario says all utilities are knocked out.

If the only water storage is in the toilet tanks, you'd better get the word out FAST not to flush. Get someone to hit all the restrooms and remove the handles or disable the auto-flush mechanisms (piece of duct tape over the sensor?).

People spread out in a large building is a waste of body heat. Get them together in a smaller room. Remember that couple that took 40 stranded travelers into their 1200 sqft home for three days during a blizzard? I'll bet they didn't need to burn much firewood.

With your mind on this subject, maybe it would be a good idea to approach the boss and suggest some pre-disaster plans and at least basic preps: food, water, possibly buckets/clip-on toilet seats, maybe a small locking refrigerator for medications like insulin.

Sue

If your toilets are of the autoflush variety, best not to be going to the bathroom at all - no power, no auto flush. Make sure your autoflush toilets have a manual flush option now, before you lose power.

Oops. OK, I was wrong about being wrong.
(Wow, that must be one real howler of a blizzard)

I am not sure now what else to add.
After keeping everybody warm and dry, dealing with any medical emergencies, making sure there was water and food available and doing something about boredom the only thing left is communications and news reporting.

Iron Raven pointed out considering a way to get the people home.
But their homes might be in worse shape than the office is. If there is no way to phone home my preference might be to avoid any travel in storm conditions.

People are going to feel a lot better though if we can get word to relatives that everybody in the building is OK. Maybe the police or local news could relay a message if we can reach them?

Edit:
I think Susan has a good idea and maybe it would be very good to find out what plans and supplies are in place already at your workplace. Then you can make suggestions or supplement with your own kit if you see a clear need.

The place I work has backup generators for each critical facility (including mine ) so heat, light and probably internet are all available. Assuming the generators don't work for some reason the challenge gets a bit more interesting but since I work in a new "green" building loss of power just means the place will slowly (very slowly) start to cool down. Loss of power also makes entering the building a pain since the place has electronic access. You can get into the first set of doors no problem but getting past the next two sets requires a working computer network and electrical power. Getting out is no problem.

I think assessing the overall situation is the most important step
- what is needed
-- water (for drinking)
-- sanitary arrangements
--- we hate the waterless urinals in our office but they would be a plus here
-- warmth
-- activities / anti-boredom
-- food
-- any special needs for anyone?
- what is available in the building (without damaging stuff)
- how bad is the external situation
-- is it worth the risk of going to get stuff from peoples cars
-- can/should I drive/walk home
--- I am well prepared after all, including a 4x4 Jeep, chains etc.
--- this may include doing shuttle service after making sure my family is OK
- what can we jury-rig out of available resources
-- we are an engineering company so this could get really interesting
- When do we start breaking into things, doing damage needs to be planned for.

Once you have done the assessment you make a plan, start on it and check to see how it is working what changes you need to make. Part of this process includes generating and updating estimates for how long the conditions will last.

This would have to be one heck of a Blizzard to have the impacts suggested and not give us warning time to get out. Maybe someone has finally come up with a weather control system and is still working out some of the bugs?

- Eric

Indeed, in my reply I was assuming the absence of utilities, but suggesting not overeacting initialy since power might be restored relativly quickly.

A modern office building is a relatively benign enviroment in which to survive a blizzard.
Certainly better than most vehicles stuck in snow.

"The place I work has backup generators for each critical facility ... so heat, light and probably internet are all available."

Even hospitals rarely keep more than three days of fuel on hand.

May I predict? If you have three buildings each with their own generators, ALL the generators will be run at the same time, all the people will stay in their own buildings, and they'll all run out of heat about the same time. That's instead of having all the people move to one building and running just one generator for three times as long.

Cynical Sue

Actually my company has enough fuel on hand to run our full facility for over a week at full consumption levels. A little conservation, including no factory production during the Blizzard and we are pretty well set for power. The main generator system is pretty impressive since it runs all of our main campus buildings including the factory. We have even used it on a couple of occasions to supplement the local grid, but yeah - that means we will all go dark at pretty much the same time. The good news is the capacity of the system means a little reasonable planning and action and we can probably keep heat and light long after the food runs out.

Not disagreeing with the logic of moving to one building, it makes sense for a lot of reasons, but if we can move everyone to one building through the storm, I'm going home.

Even if we lose power, I work in a very well insulated building and will be stuck there with over 400 other biological heating units. If we collect in the center of the building we can probably stay safely warm for a long time.

However things turn out I still think we need to figure out who is playing with weather control if the storm is this bad and came on with no warning.

- Eric

I work for a school that feeds 800+ kids a day, so food/water would be covered for a long time. We also have generators and gas available at the nearby maintenance shop. We could use wrestling mats and clinic cots as beds, and the clinic is also stocked with first aid supplies. I think we'd be in pretty good shape for a while.