Disaster Preparedness Guide for Small Business: You’ve Gotta Have a Plan!

By Becky Crow

Disaster can hit anyone, anytime, anywhere! Don’t be naïve in thinking that bad things won’t happen to you. You’ve gotta have a plan!

As a small business owner, engage in a conversation with a disaster preparedness expert and build a solid emergency operations plan for a fraction of what you would pay a consultant. Follow an easy, step by step guide that will take you through all the elements you need to prepare your company for staying in business after a disaster.

Look at what you will learn:
Risk Analysis
Hazard Mitigation Planning
Documentation
Continuity of Operations Planning
Emergency Response
Recovery Operations
Workplace Violence Prevention
Employee Family Preparedness

Learn the value of training and exercises and how much they help you when the bad thing happens. It is not a matter of if the bad thing happens. It is a matter of when the bad thing happens.
Be ready! Learn how to build your plan and plan to stay in business!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Jul 23, 2014
• ISBN: 9781483413396

Book preview

Disaster Preparedness Guide for Small Business

YOU’VE GOTTA HAVE A PLAN!

BECKY CROW

Copyright © 2014 Becky Crow

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

This book is presented solely for the educational purposes for small businesses to prepare for disasters of all kinds. The information, ideas and suggestions are not intended as a substitute for professional advice. Every company is different, and the advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for all situations. While best efforts have been used in preparing this book, Becky Crow (aka Rebecca A. Crow) and Lulu Publishing Services, Inc. make no representations or warranties of any kind and shall not be held liable or responsible to any person or entity with respect to any loss or incidental or consequential damages caused, or alleged to have been caused, directly or indirectly, by the use of the information contained herein. If the content in this book does not meet the reader’s disaster preparedness needs, the reader may return the book for a full refund.

ISBN: 978-1-4834-1340-2(sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-1339-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014910295

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 7/14/2014

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1: How Do I Get Started?

Chapter 2: Risk Analysis

Chapter 3: Hazard Mitigation Planning

Chapter 4: Continuity of Operations Plan (COOP)

Chapter 5: Emergency Response Operations

Chapter 6: Document, Document, Document!

Chapter 7: Recovery Operations

Chapter 8: Employee Preparedness

Chapter 9: Workplace Violence Prevention

Chapter 10: Terrorism

Chapter 11: Training and Exercises

Glossary

Appendix A: Vulnerability Checklist

Appendix B: Continuity of Operations Plan (COOP) Checklist

Appendix C: Operations Information

Appendix D: Family Preparedness

Appendix E: Workplace Violence Information

Appendix F: References

Introduction

D isaster strikes everywhere. No one is immune, yet have you noticed how people think it will never happen to them? The definition of a disaster is any event that overwhelms a region and its services. Police and Fire staff their operations for the routine. When a disaster happens, there is a huge spike in the demand for services, but they are not able to meet the demand. In the 1990s, communities began to see that if they could educate their citizens to plan for disasters, individuals could stand alone for a while, giving first responders an opportunity to deal with the immediate concerns of life safety. By training neighborhood groups to work together in the immediate response after a disaster, communities could leverage the resources of their first responders, save lives, and begin a speedier process of reco very.

Disaster planning and education started at the local and state levels. When the East Oakland Hills fires occurred in 1992, fire strike teams came from all over California to fight this devastating fire. They quickly learned, however, that the fire hoses on the trucks from out of town did not fit the couplers on the fire hydrants. As a result, firefighting efforts were severely hampered, and many more homes were lost than would have been if those hoses had fit the fire hydrants. California said, "We must never let this happen again. We must standardize our equipment." And shortly after that, the Standardized Emergency Management System (SEMS) was born in California, the first state to set up such a system.

They used management tools for responding to disasters that had been used in the military and US Forest Service for fighting wildfires, such as the Incident Command System. The new system required that all the equipment be standardized, including the methodology for training and the response to the disaster. This way, teams could come from all over California to deal with a disaster, and they would all speak the same language. They found that this was very efficient. Other states soon followed suit and began to put together robust planning systems to deal with disasters.

The bombing of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, was the greatest disaster America had ever seen. In 2002, the Department of Homeland Security came into being. Shortly after that, the National Incident Management System (NIMS) was established. NIMS was fashioned after California’s system, SEMS. Then all states and municipalities were required to have a plan in place to deal with disasters. Public education was still in its fledgling stages in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina came ashore on the Gulf Coast and gave America a wake-up call regarding disaster planning. It was clear that we weren’t all on board yet and that all of our parts were not yet working together.

I was working at a community college in Washington State in the 1990s, and by 1998, colleges and universities around the state were building their disaster response plans. People in the responder community began to branch out to educate public institutions and municipalities. I was involved in those early years, so you could say that I have been around for a while. My brother said to me that once you start to get a little gray in your hair, people begin to listen to you. I could easily see the value in this planning, and thus I began to educate anyone who would listen.

I have been involved with disaster preparedness planning for fifteen years, and there is one telling, rather, glaring aspect to all of this that shouts out for attention. Small business has pretty much been left out. I have worked with large public agencies, colleges, universities, and local leaders in the responder community, but I have seen little attention given to small business.

Small business hires America! We have seen disaster after disaster when, in the aftermath, the devastation to small businesses is overwhelming. We think of them as struggling day-to-day just to eke out a living. Small business owners see themselves as having few resources to set aside for an improbable event that might occur. But if they could improve their chances on a small budget, in most cases requiring little or no money, wouldn’t that make sense? What if they could pick up and go on after a major event?

This book is a disaster-planning guide for small business owners. The target audience is companies with fifty or fewer employees, even though larger companies could benefit from this information, too. The narration is a conversation between the business owner and me.

Okay, let’s get this one thing straight right off the bat. Where gender pronouns are in order, I will use his or he generically or as gender - neutral. There is no intent to exclude feminine business owners. Where it statistically is supported, you will see she or her.

I suggest that you structure your disaster planning as formally or as simply as you like. You have all the flexibility to make it what you want. It is simple and easy to follow with enough detail that you can put together a comprehensive plan for your business. Yet it is not so exhaustive that your eyes glaze over with government gobbledygook.

For years, small business owners thought they were really doing well if they insured their businesses against losses. That was the extent of their disaster planning. Some were so undercapitalized when they started that they didn’t even have insurance. Then a disaster happened, and they were out of business, and their employees were unemployed. Disaster preparedness planning is an inexpensive form of insurance. By investing in some time up front to get your ducks in a row, you can improve your chances of survival and impress your insurance company to reduce your premiums. I say, You’ve gotta have a plan!

In this guide, I will take you through the process of putting a good plan together for your company. The first chapter helps you get started with your employees. You can’t have a plan without knowing what your hazards are. You will identify them and then see if there is anything you can do to mitigate the damage or loss by planning ahead. Since business continuity is critical, I also address continuity of operations planning. This is based on the possibility of pandemic influenza. Pandemic influenza is global and affects everyone in every facet of business. This chapter discusses the distribution of goods and services and helps you determine how much absenteeism your business can tolerate before it really starts to affect your ability to operate.

The next section gets you and your committee into the nitty-gritty of who will do what in your response to a bad thing. This is really going to help you cover the main aspects of what needs to be done during the chaos of a disaster while reducing redundancy of effort. By giving lots of different people separate duties, they have a shorter list of things to learn and will be more efficient. In other words, it helps you leverage your staff to respond far more efficiently. If everyone knows his role, you don’t have to think of everything yourself.

Next you will learn about the importance of good documentation. If you put together some simple forms and checklists now, you will be less likely to forget things when the bad thing happens. It is all good.

Having a good recovery plan in place will impress the Small Business Administration if you need some help with a loan. What if you have to relocate your business? Do your employees need help with recovery? What can you do in advance to develop relationships with people who may be in big demand when the bad thing happens to get your business restored faster?

An unprepared employee is not an asset to your company. An employee who has done nothing to prepare his family for a disaster will not be with you when you are ready to recover and reopen your business. I call it an investment in time to educate your employees about their family preparedness.

I have devoted a full chapter to workplace violence prevention. This is followed by a chapter on terrorism. We are now talking about man-made disasters. What can be done about these senseless tragedies? You will see that there is much you can do to reduce the likelihood of violence in the workplace and improve your recovery by understanding some warning signs and educating your employees. I discuss domestic violence coming to work, placing employees at risk, and what you can do to plan. We know that information sharing or intelligence is the greatest preventer of terrorism. You will learn more about weapons of mass destruction, and what you can do to protect your employees. There is also a dynamite bomb threat checklist to give to your employees who answer the phone for your business.

You see, it is not a matter of if the bad thing happens. It is more a matter of when the bad thing happens. I am sure that the parents of those lovely children at Sandy Hook Elementary School never dreamed of the