The Emergency Action Plan– Do You Have One?

     Recently, a major storm arrived and brought with it snow, ice and freezing cold weather.  The wind was so strong that roofs were damaged and car ports were turned over.  In one downtown building, the water burst from a frozen pipe and allowed water and mud to flow into the electrical power distribution box that serviced the whole building.

      Well, guess what?  Now, 2 weeks later, the building is still under repair and the building’s occupants are working from home, Starbucks, the Court House, Hawaii, the other office 4 counties over, anyplace other than the building downtown.  Why?  Well, until the whole power distribution box can be repaired, the whole building is not functional nor does it have any electricity.

       What happens if that is your building?  Do you have an emergency action back up plan?  If your building is damaged to the point where it is uninhabitable, what are you going to do?  Where are the back up files?  The servers– does the Uninterpretable Power Supply (UPS) have enough power to run the servers?  What about file storage?  Are you in the “Cloud” or do you back up every night?  What about the phones?  Can they be answered?  Where are they forwarded to?  What about the mail?

        The questions come at 1000 miles an hour.  Most business owners don’t think about it until after a damaging event occurs.  Now is the time to plan for an eventual disaster.  Go to SBA.GOV for checklists relating to business damage.  Fill the checklist out, carefully.  You may be amazed how valuable the exercise was, what you learned and what you will do if a disaster strikes your business or organization.