DISASTER PREPAREDNESS
PHOTO: MARK HENRY, COURTESY OF QUEST TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT
Downed utility poles in front of Quest Technology in January 2010.
that most ineffable of all insurance phrases: an Act of God.
THE ELEMENTS OF PREPAREDNESS Three-quarters of small businesses have no disaster plan, according to a 2015 survey by Nationwide Insurance. It’ s easy to understand why— most owners think they have more immediate problems.“ It comes down to comfort with financial risk,” says Tim Burke, president and CEO of Quest Technology Management in Roseville, which provides disaster recovery and continuity planning services to businesses.“ For some, it’ s just overhead. Money’ s tight, so some people say‘ I’ m going to roll the dice.’ Companies roll the dice all the time in business.”
Businesses that fail after a disaster usually aren’ t undone by the destruction of physical infrastructure. Rather, it’ s the lack of intellectual infrastructure that takes them down.“ It’ s as simple as not having the records you need to function,” says Mike Dever, an emergency management consultant who was previously an administrator of Santa Cruz County’ s Office of Emergency
Services.“ You can rebuild physically. But if you don’ t have the documents, you’ re in trouble,” he says.
That means emergency preparedness is as important as insurance— earthquake and flood coverage can reimburse for damages but won’ t get a business back up and running. And insurance costs and emergency planning intersect, since a business’ s rates may go down if it has an emergency management plan in place, says Dever.
Nora O’ Brien, an emergency management and business continuity expert, knows what it’ s like to act fast during a calamity. During the 2007 California wildfires, she helped evacuate roughly 1 million people in 24 hours from community health clinics as part of her job directing emergency management for the California Primary Care Association.
She says how-to manuals on disaster planning may be long, but can be distilled down to three main components.
First, assess: What are your real or potential risks? In Sacramento, your“ hazard vulnerability analysis” won’ t include an erupting volcano. But flooding, an active-shooter situation, or a data breach all should be included, she says.
Second, strategize: How will you reopen? What’ s the likely impact of a catastrophe on your supply chain, staffing, data accessibility, and physical facilities? How soon do you have to be operational to avoid losing customers? All of those go into your continuity plan— which gets you ready to move to another building, identify alternative vendors and assign staff responsibilities, O’ Brien says. Adds Dever,“ The whole game is how fast can you get back to normal operations. The continuity plan is what actually gives you the ability to recover.”
Third, test: A plan is only as good as your team’ s ability to implement it. Testing can be either a full training— involving physically going through the steps— or a tabletop exercise in which participants are quizzed on what to do in various disasterrelated situations. Training also lets you update your plan, which should happen at least once a year, O’ Brien says.
Those plans don’ t have to be elaborate or time-consuming.“ It’ s better to have some kind of plan than none,” says Dever.
74 comstocksmag. com | January 2018