Disaster Recovery and Hurricane Preparedness Planning – ‘Define Your Day After’

Tomorrow is the last day of Hurricane Preparedness Week 2008 and a recent Mason-Dixon Poll shows that 2 mild storm seasons have lulled many people into a false sense of security. Among the poll results emergency management officials find most alarming are these:

• 54% don’t feel vulnerable to a hurricane or related tornado or flooding,
• 56% have no family disaster plan,
• 67% have no hurricane survival kit,
• 85% have taken no steps to make their homes stronger since the last hurricane season,
• 13% said they might not or would not evacuate even if ordered to do so, leaving thousands of residents at grave risk in the path of any given storm.

And these statistics don’t even address what people have or have not done to prepare their businesses for the eventuality of a hurricane or other emergency.

Well, this year The Department of Homeland Security is urging small businesses to ‘Define Their Day After’ through new public service advertisements and their Ready.gov website.

A recent press release from DHS reads:

For Immediate Release
May 20, 2008

WASHINGTON — As hurricane season approaches, Homeland Security’s Ready Campaign and The Advertising Council are reaching out to small businesses and encouraging them to “define their day after” by putting emergency preparedness at the top of their to-do list. A series of national public service advertisements (PSA) entitled “Procrastination” were released nationwide today for radio, print, internet and outdoor media. These PSAs focus on what can happen when a business owner chooses to place making an emergency plan at the bottom of their to-do list. The theme taps into the natural tendency for individuals to put off making plans for another day.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, small businesses employ more than half of all Americans. However, Institute for Business and Home Safety research shows that, at the minimum, one in four businesses never reopen following a disaster.

“Research conducted by the Ad Council found that more than 85 percent of small businesses understand that emergency preparedness is important, yet only four in ten businesses have a plan to protect their businesses,” said Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. “The ability of these businesses to survive and recover quickly from both natural and man-made disasters directly benefits employees, customers, the community and the local, and even national, economy.”

As our contribution to preparing your business for an emergency we are offering free access to the audio and handouts for our teleseminar, Riding The Storm Out. The link will take you to a page with many Hurricane and Emergency Preparedness resources as well as a short form to sign up for the free teleseminar. It’s a recording – so you can listen to it whenever you want, but don’t wait until you’re reacting to an emergency; the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, the second best time is today.

A small investment of time and energy now can literally be the difference between whether or not you are still in business on ‘the day after’.