DISASTER RECOVERY: HOW WORKING TOGETHER
SPEEDS RECOVERY
You've spent thousands of dollars and hundred of hours developing a sound disaster recovery program. Staff and management are trained to act quickly to mitigate damage and safeguard lives and property. But you may be disturbed to learn that survival hinges largely on something you've had no control over - your state and local emergency management planners.
It seems like an obvious match, but the private sector's disaster planning specialists and their municipal counterparts have no history of coordination. That's starting to change, though. The evolving concept in disaster mitigation theory links the life of the community with the health of its businesses. That means communities increasingly see restoring business quickly as the way to save themselves after a crisis or catastrophe. It also means that business owners can become a stakeholder in their local catastrophe response planning programs.
BUSINESS AND COMMUNITY ARE INTERDEPENDENT
Disaster response planners have realized that communities suffer exponentially after a disaster and that the longer businesses remain incapacitated, the more devastated the community will be. A given area's people form both its customer base and its employee base, so every business that fails after a catastrophe could cause long-range harm to the community's people, economy, and tax base. Yet the traditional model for municipal contingency planning has addressed facility survival, not business continuation.
Today's disaster planners now recognize that business survival, not just physical restoration of damaged property, is paramount. To that end, local disaster recovery coalitions are being formed to share information, technology, strategies, and survival resources among businesses, vital utilities, emergency services, and government agencies.
These public/private partnerships for emergency management, as the Federal Emergency Management Agency calls them, develop protocols for saving property, restoring services, and preparing businesses to resume operation after an emergency. Business recovery alliances are appearing all over the country, particularly in metropolitan areas. They bring together risk managers; emergency management officials; business leaders; utilities; and financial, insurance, transportation, communications, and emergency services providers to plan for and coordinate efforts following a disaster.
BENEFITS OF REGIONAL BUSINESS ALLIANCES
Where do your local fire department, utility planners, and municipal disaster recovery strategists place your business or neighborhood on the list for recovery triage? Knowing how things are expected to work can help you strengthen or refine your own disaster recovery plan and response training. Disaster planners from major utilities target ways to help businesses restore communications, reconnect with suppliers, and resume production. Insurance industry representatives offer strategies on rebuilding and insurance matters. The key is to coordinate municipal disaster recovery responses in ways that do the most to protect the community and its businesses after a catastrophe.
A version of this article appeared in RiskVue and is reprinted with permission. Griffin Communications Inc. can be reached at 1420 Bristol Street N., #220, Newport Beach, CA 92660, (949) 752-1058, toll-free (800) 205-6218, fax (949) 955-1929, Web site www.griffincom.com, e-mail [email protected].