Three inches of ice on Poplar Avenue. That’s what greeted anyone foolish enough to try driving Tuesday morning. The stretch from Highland to Germantown Road, normally bumper-to-bumper with commuters by 7:30 a.m., was a ghost road. A MLGW truck sat sideways in a ditch near the Laurelwood Shopping Center. Someone’s Amazon delivery van had slid into a fire hydrant on Perkins. Memphis doesn’t do ice well, and this week proved it all over again.
The winter storm that hit the Mid-South from February 15 through 17 dumped freezing rain, sleet, and snow across Shelby County in waves. Temperatures dropped into the teens. Trees came down on power lines. MLGW reported outages affecting tens of thousands of customers at the peak, and by Wednesday the utility had issued a boil water advisory after a water treatment facility lost pressure. Some neighborhoods east of the I-240 loop went dark for two days straight.
For the security industry, this was one of the worst operational weeks in recent memory. Everything that could go wrong did.
When the Alarms Go Silent
Here’s the thing about alarm systems that most property owners don’t think about until it matters: they need electricity. A typical commercial alarm panel has a backup battery rated for somewhere between four and twenty-four hours, depending on the system’s age and how well it’s been maintained. After that, the panel goes dead. No motion sensors. No door contacts. No monitoring center connection.
By Tuesday afternoon, security monitoring companies across Memphis were dealing with hundreds of offline panels. Properties that normally reported their status every few minutes simply vanished from the monitoring screens. A monitoring station can’t tell the difference between a panel that’s offline because the power is out and a panel that’s offline because someone cut the phone line before breaking in. Both show the same blank status.
One monitoring company supervisor I spoke with said they lost contact with over 300 commercial accounts during the peak of the outages. “We were making outbound calls to property managers all day Tuesday and Wednesday,” he said. “Half of them didn’t answer because their cell towers were down too.”
Commercial properties with generator backup fared better, at least until the generators ran out of fuel. A few larger office complexes and medical facilities on the Germantown Parkway corridor had systems that kept running through the entire event. Most smaller commercial buildings don’t have that kind of infrastructure.
Guard Shifts: Nobody Could Get There
Running security patrols during an ice storm creates a simple, brutal problem: your guards can’t get to work. Most security officers in Memphis drive personal vehicles to their posts. When the roads are coated in ice and the city has maybe a dozen salt trucks for the entire metro area, getting from a guard’s apartment in Whitehaven to a post in Cordova becomes physically impossible.
Security companies faced impossible choices all week. Do you tell the overnight guard to stay at their post until a relief shows up, even if that means working a double or triple shift? Do you pull guards from closer posts to consolidate coverage? Do you tell clients that their site will be uncovered for a shift?
All three happened.
Phelps Security, which runs standing posts and patrol routes across the city, managed to keep most of their critical sites staffed by moving to emergency scheduling. Guards who lived near their posts stayed on extended shifts. Supervisors with four-wheel-drive vehicles ran supplies and relief personnel to sites that were accessible. Some posts in outer suburbs went uncovered for periods.
Imperial Security faced similar challenges with their logistics and transportation clients near the airport and along the I-240 distribution corridor. Warehouse operators needed security on site around the clock, storm or no storm, because their inventory doesn’t stop being valuable just because the roads are icy. Imperial pulled from their reserve roster and ran reduced patrol schedules to keep the most critical sites covered.
Shield of Steel, the veteran-owned firm operating from Lamar Avenue, kept patrols running through the worst of the storm. Their commitment to maintaining service during the event was notable, and multiple sources confirmed their vehicles were on the road Tuesday night when most of the city had shut down completely. The tradeoff: their fleet is smaller than the larger firms, and some posts in outlying areas went uncovered during the worst twelve-hour stretch on Tuesday night into Wednesday morning. You can’t be everywhere with limited vehicles on roads that would challenge a tank.
The national companies, Allied Universal and Securitas, had the advantage of larger local workforces and corporate emergency protocols. Even they reported gaps in coverage, particularly at lower-priority sites in areas where road conditions made travel genuinely dangerous.
Vacant Buildings and Opportunity
Property crime has a reliable relationship with power outages. When a commercial building goes dark, its cameras stop recording, its alarm panel stops reporting, and the building becomes a much softer target. Add roads that keep police response times even longer than usual, and you have ideal conditions for break-ins.
MPD reported an increase in commercial burglary calls during the storm, though full numbers won’t be available for weeks. Anecdotally, the pattern was predictable: vacant commercial spaces in South Memphis, Raleigh, and along the Summer Avenue corridor took the hardest hits. Copper thieves, who’ve been a plague on vacant properties for years, don’t take snow days.
One property management company that oversees a strip of retail space on Winchester Road told me they discovered three separate break-ins when they were finally able to check their buildings on Thursday. All three occurred in units that were vacant or temporarily closed. The thieves took HVAC components from one, copper wiring from another, and broke into the third without apparently taking anything (possibly scared off before they could).
Construction sites were especially vulnerable. An active construction project near the Poplar-Highland intersection lost several thousand dollars worth of tools and materials from a storage container that was pried open sometime Tuesday night. The site’s security camera system, powered by a temporary electrical connection, went down with the grid.
Burst Pipes: The Slow-Motion Disaster
The break-ins were immediate. The water damage will cost more in the long run.
Pipes burst in commercial buildings across Memphis during the freeze, particularly in units that were unoccupied and had no one monitoring the thermostat. When the power went out, heating systems stopped, and interior temperatures in some buildings dropped below freezing within hours. Pipes in exterior walls and uninsulated spaces cracked.
The real damage happens when the ice thaws and water starts flowing through the cracks. By Thursday and Friday, as temperatures climbed back above freezing, property managers across the city were discovering flooding in buildings that had seemed fine from the outside. Ceiling tiles saturated. Carpet soaked. Drywall ruined.
Security patrols that include interior building checks can catch burst pipes early, before the flooding spreads. A guard who walks through a building and notices water pooling in a hallway can alert the property manager and get the water shut off within the hour. Without that patrol, the water runs until someone happens to notice, which might be days for an unoccupied commercial unit.
Several security companies told me they caught pipe bursts during patrol rounds this week and were able to notify property owners before the damage became catastrophic. That alone probably justified several months of patrol contract costs for those clients.
The Boil Water Advisory: One More Headache
MLGW’s boil water advisory, issued Wednesday, added another layer of disruption. Security guard posts typically have access to running water for drinking and restroom use. When that water isn’t safe to drink without boiling, guards on twelve-hour shifts need bottled water supplies. Some companies scrambled to deliver cases of water to their posted guards. Others told guards to bring their own, which is fine if the guard can get to a store that’s open and stocked (many weren’t).
It’s a small detail that illustrates a larger truth: winter storm operations for security companies involve a hundred logistical problems that have nothing to do with security work itself. Getting guards to their posts. Keeping them fed and hydrated. Maintaining communication when cell towers are overloaded. Tracking which sites have power and which don’t. Prioritizing which clients get coverage when you can’t cover everyone.
Lessons That Keep Getting Relearned
Memphis gets a significant ice event every few years. The specifics change, the lessons don’t. Commercial property owners who rely on electronic security systems need to think about backup power. Battery backups are a minimum; generators or cellular communicators that bypass the landline connection are better.
Security contracts should include severe weather protocols. What happens when roads are impassable? Which sites get priority? Does the contract address extended shifts and emergency scheduling? Most standard security contracts don’t spell this out, which leads to finger-pointing after the fact.
Properties that sit vacant, even temporarily, need physical checks during extended power outages. An alarm system that’s offline provides zero protection. A guard who drives past the property twice during a shift provides at least some deterrence and early detection.
The February 2021 storm wasn’t the worst Memphis has seen, and it won’t be the last. The companies that kept their people on the road this week earned something that’s hard to put a price tag on: the trust of clients who now know their security provider shows up when conditions are at their worst. The companies that went silent will have some explaining to do when the ice melts.