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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.

Though it seems like an obvious match, there is no history of coordination between the private sector’s disaster planning specialists and their municipal counterparts. But things are starting to change. 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 fast as the way to save themselves after a crisis or catastrophe. And it means you, as a business owner, can become a stakeholder in your local catastrophe response planning program.

Business and community are interdependent

Disaster response planners have realized that communities suffer exponentially after a disaster, and the longer businesses remain incapacitated, the more devastated the community will be. Since people form both the customer base and the employee base of a given area, every business that fails after a catastrophe could cause long-range harm to the people, the economy and the tax base of the community. The traditional model for municipal contingency planning has addressed facility survival, rather than business continuation.

But today’s disaster planners recognize that business survival is the paramount issue — not merely physical restoration of damaged property To that end, local disaster recovery coalitions are being formed to share information, technology, strategies and survival resources between businesses, vital utilities, emergency services and government agencies.

These “public/private partnerships for emergency management,” as the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) calls them, develop protocols for saving property, restoring services, and preparing businesses for restoration after an emergency. Business recovery alliances are appearing all over the country, particularly in metropolitan areas. In California, the Orange County Disaster Recovery Alliance and the Palo Alto-based Disaster Recovery Business Alliance bring together risk managers, emergency management officials, business leaders, utilities, financial, insurance, transportation, communications and emergency service 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 beef up or fine tune 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 bring 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.

ONLINE RESOURCES

Federal Emergency Management Agency
Global Continuity.com
Survive.com

riskVue | The webzine for risk management professionals
December 2000