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When New Orleans is sinking
A book has been collecting dust here in my office. To be honest, I didn’t read it because I thought perhaps it was opportunistic puffery. You see, the book is called Contingency Planning and Disaster Recovery(John Wiley & Sons).
The topic exploded after September 11, 2001. Suddenly, there was a barrage of products on the market to help us prepare for emergencies such as say, passenger jets plunging into high rises. There were escape chutes that conveniently uncoil from windows, allowing workers to (dubiously) slide to safety. Gas masks were popular too, along with metal detectors, bomb sniffing equipment, and more recently software—globs of it, focused on getting your business through an emergency.
All of us remember September 11, and even today, we experience strong reactions when recalling it. No one likes to think opportunists could be leveraging that fear and emotion to sell their often unnecessary wares. So I admit, I paid only minimal attention to many of these “emergency” products. Books got the same treatment—until Hurricane Katrina.
The day after it struck, I read the papers, expecting the usual clean-up stories—shutters coming off windows, citizens hugging in relieved jubilation. For a while that’s what happened—until the levee broke. Again we absorbed with shocked dismay the ever-increasing death toll, the looting, the anarchy.
Gasoline and energy prices shot up. The Port of New Orleans—one of the busiest in the US—sustained heavy damage. Analysts say the shipping backlogs and economic effects of the flood may be felt for months. Smaller companies and truck operators may teeter into bankruptcy trying to absorb higher costs.
So I opened up that book, flipped to the section on floods. It says keep your IT assets on the upper floors if you’re in a flood-prone area. There are also tips for hurricanes, heat waves, sabotage and terrorism. That part reads much like a survival guide—mildly interesting.
The rest of the book is a gold mine. It serves up practical tips on different insurance packages, data backup plans, how to deal with equipment failures and unplanned downtime, how to make your business more secure (everything from the mail to Internet access).
It also covers value assessment, and advice on what hardware and networks are better able to withstand emergencies. Canadian contacts are provided in the resources section, and there are unbiased lists of consulting companies, useful portals and web sites.
It has two authors—Donna Childs, whose small business is located near Ground Zero in New York. Her company—a Wall Street capital firm dedicated to poverty elimination— survived September 11, thanks to advance emergency planning. The other writer is Stefan Dietrich, a computer and disaster recovery expert. Both offer credible, personal insight on staying afloat through a disaster. Part of the sales royalties of the book go to charity—a nice touch.
Purchasing managers should seriously consider becoming articulate on this topic, given the increasing focus on workplace safety and security. Your opinion may be requested from your company’s health and safety committee. Or, you could take the initiative and source alternate insurance companies with better disaster coverage, or more robust IT providers.
If emergencies, even minor ones, do occur, you’ll be a better position to swim—not sink.
Lisa Wichmann
Editor
We welcome your comments. Contact the editor at lisa.wichmann@pb2b.rogers.com
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