On Friday, March 31, 2023, the employees of Best Association Management left early to get a jumpstart on the weekend. An hour later, their office was gone.
Around 2:00 PM, an EF-3 tornado carved a swath across West Little Rock, destroying the Best Association Management office and devastating many homes and businesses. Thankfully, all of the Best Association Management employees were safe, and the next day they gathered along with friends and family to salvage what they could from the wreckage.
“The first time I saw the building and all of the office smashed in, I thought we would never get the business put back together,” said Anne Fuller, owner of Best Association Management. “The destruction was overwhelming. But thanks to a great group of clients and friends that came to help us recover what we could from the rubble, my wonderful employees and I started over.”
Crawling through busted windows and treading carefully over debris, they managed to save the server and many important files, though the latter were warped by water and gritty with dirt. The building next door, which was mostly untouched by the storm, had some open offices on the ground floor and graciously allowed Best Association Management to move all of their supplies inside.
“The cleanup after the tornado was a true team effort. Not just our personal office team, but from those in the community around us and those that belong to organizations that we support,” said Marilyn Porterfield, Director of Client Services. “Once we pulled as much as we could from the rubble, the work for our office still continued, as we worked to salvage as many client files and materials as we could. Anne Fuller worked to restore the cloud backup on a new server so that we could get back to serving our clients quickly.”
With clients to take care of and at least one large event coming up at the end of April, the Best Association Management team didn’t miss a beat. They laid out papers to dry, took stock of what was missing, and did whatever was necessary to make sure work continued smoothly. It was a long process with countless lists and lots of manual labor, but they came together, rolled up their sleeves, and got it done.
Some files and personal belongings were never recovered, but the most important thing remained safe – the people. Now, two years later, their new office is starting to feel like home.
