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Hurricane Readiness
Preparing Your Employees and Business for the Worst
Taking the right steps before a storm hits can ensure you are up
and running quickly when itĚs all over.
By Neil Baxley
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The
forecaster for the Weather Channel is predicting doom and gloom for
the coast. A Category 5 storm is bearing down and will likely produce
catastrophic damage. Government agencies are preparing for a full-scale
evacuation. As the chief operating officer of your company, you are
now tasked with dealing with the storm from a business standpoint.
The storm checklist consists of giving the employees the day off to
go do whatever they intend to do; maybe grab those storm shutters
and install them on the windows and, oh yeah, do that most southern
of all traditions, go to the grocery store and buy bread, bottled
water and batteries.
Is this all that we need to do to prepare? Not really. And what do
we do with all those batteries?
EMPLOYEES FIRST
First and foremost our employees are our most valuable resource. With
the Atlantic hurricane season now underway for this year, we need
to have all of our preparations completed and ready to go. When the
storm has passed and it’s time to reopen, our employees must
be able to concentrate on the task at hand.
In order to do this all of their personal needs must have been met.
This can be quickly accomplished by counseling each employee to purchase
adequate insurance to replace or repair whatever is lost or damaged.
If the employee rents, renter’s insurance is available in most
areas to cover personal belongings. The National Flood Insurance program
is relatively inexpensive and is invaluable. But remember that the
policy must be in place a minimum of 30 days prior to the storm.
If the employee will be evacuating either with the family or sending
the family away, ensure that the employee has a family evacuation
plan. Things to consider:
1. Where will they go?
2. How will they get there?
3. What will they take with them?
Your employees obviously cannot take all of their belongings. Only
family heirlooms and irreplaceable photo albums should be taken. It
should be remembered to take special kids’ toys etc. that will
help the young ones deal with the trauma of enduring a storm. Personally
I keep all of my photo negatives in negative sleeves (dated and labeled)
and then inserted into a three ring binder. This makes replacement
very easy if something happens to the photos.
Now, with the employees taken care of, it’s time to look to the
business.
TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS
For starters, that means plywood on the windows and doors. Actually,
some type of hurricane shutter is a better idea. After that is done
it is important to take a good hard look at the business facility.
What else needs to be protected?
How many computers does your business use? What are the plans for
the stored data? Considerations should include taking disc backups
of the information and sending them with one employee in one direction
and actually sending the hard-drives and CPUs with another employee
in another direction. This saves both the data and the equipment it
resides in. That way the business can be opened back up in a tent
with a generator if necessary.
How about rolling inventory? How many vehicles does the business own
and what will be done to protect them? Perhaps an agreement with a
business in a neighboring county that will likely not suffer nearly
as much is a possibility. Parking the vehicles at that facility will
prevent them being submerged in saltwater, having trees fall on them
or, in worst cases, the building falling on them.
Ensure that, wherever the vehicles are sent, that the location is
not subject to inland freshwater flooding. After Hurricane Floyd,
large sections of low-lying inland North Carolina were flooded. Vehicles
remained submerged for days and businesses not normally affected by
hurricanes were financially devastated.
Other small things can be done around the facility to mitigate storm
damage: Remove the outdoor signs and store them in a relatively safe
place inside. This keeps them from becoming missiles (and prevents
liability for you) as well as gets you ready to resume advertising
after the storm. An undamaged sign out front lets your customers know
that you are home and open.
Send a pack of necessary forms with an employee to a secure location.
These would include at least a two weeks supply of every invoice,
order form and billing form that the business needs to function.
If the business needs local vendors to operate, consider legal agreements
that lock in prices at pre-storm levels to prevent opportunistic billing.
Finally, make a thorough inventory of everything the company owns
with video and photographs. This will make insurance claims much easier.
Store these somewhere safe or send them away during an evacuation.
RECOVERY PLANNING
While this is not everything that can be done to prepare for a storm
it should provide a good basic start for most businesses. Many other
ideas may present themselves from this beginning.
While a great deal of preparation over the years has gone into evacuation
planning, it is only in the last few years that recovery planning
has become a major consideration with government agencies. Now it
should also become a major consideration with private enterprise.
Neil Baxley holds the rank of major in the Beaufort
County, SC, Sheriff’s Office and performs the duties of Administrative
Division Commander. Since 1993 he has been the Emergency Planner for
Beaufort County and as such prepares all evacuation plans, reentry
plans and security plans for natural disasters within the county.
He works closely with the country’s Emergency Management Department
as well as the state’s Emergency Management Agency. He has successfully
managed the evacuation of Beaufort County in preparation for hurricanes
Bertha, Fran and Floyd. |
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