Thursday, December 21, 2006

No Power and Business Continuity

Link to Business Continuity

Recent events have once again brought up an age old issue for me.  In Washington State we recently had a pretty major storm.  On Thursday December 14 through the evening we had winds exceeding 60 MPH.  This following a month of record breaking rain fall in November.  We were recently knocked out by a snow storm but this wind storm gave us the one-two punch. 

I myself had the lights come back on December 19 but that didn't mean I could get on the Internet or use my phones.  That came back to a limited degree on December 20 (meaning it would come on then go off...then back on and so forth).  Today we seem to be doing pretty well.

In my case my cell phone was also only working in certain areas for days.  Gas stations that were able to open were over crowded and having much trouble.  Many businesses had to go to cash only and banks were only letting a few customers at a time into the building and allowing them some cash.

Today there are still people without power and other services and they may have to wait a few more days still.  I wrote an article on my website back a while ago about coming through just such disasters.  I thought I would put a link to it and maybe it will help.  There are many businesses for which this advice will come too late but hopefully there are many that it can still help.  I also put together a talk on the subject complete with PowerPoint slide show to go over some of the things people need to think about.  If you are reading this and you wish to have me come talk with your company or other group about the issue (and if you are close to Redmond, Washington) I would be happy to see if we can work out a time to talk. 

This is of course a pretty big issue for people and usually we only think about it when something bad has already happened.  I hope you think about it before then and are ready for whatever occurs.  Today there are many new options of what people can do to be prepared, things I could only dream about when the mentioned article was written. 

 

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