Lexington, KY - The Division of Emergency Management (DEM) only has to refer to the tragic events in Joplin, Mo. and Tuscaloosa, Ala., as reasons for local businesses to be prepared for an emergency as the year’s severe weather season approaches.
“The last two tornado warnings in Fayette County have been during business hours,” said Shelley Bendall, preparation coordinator for DEM.
Emergency shelter and evacuation plans are a must for every business, according to Bendall and her colleague John Bobel, DEM’s public information officer.
“There are really simple things” a business can do to have as much warning as possible, Bobel said. “Like does the business have a working NOAA Weather Radio, so that during the course of normal business hours… are you aware that there may be a storm that’s formed and is heading this way?”
Owners not only need to have a plan to keep employees safe, Bendall said, but if they have customers, they need to be accounted for too.
“Does your safe room have enough room to house everyone?” Bendall asked. “Is there a way to get word out that you need to get to the safe room?”
The best safe area of a building varies depending on the structure. In a big-box store, for example, gathering in the center of the building could be one of the worst things to do, given their construction. Bobel said in a situation of operating a large store or factory built in a box-type fashion, a bathroom might be the best spot, if it is big enough for all.
“You’ve at least got cinderblock,” Bobel said. “They’re typically on the inside (of the main building wall), they’ve got plumbing in the walls and you’ve got doors. You don’t necessarily want to go to the manager’s office, because that might be nothing more than two pieces of drywall and some aluminum studs, which is not going to sustain a 150-mile-per-hour wind,” he said.
While many large companies mandate plans and even have departments that deal with nothing else, DEM will work with Lexington businesses to survey their building to determine the best place to seek shelter. DEM will also go over a list of other important safety measures, like designating a meeting point in the case of evacuation to ensure accounting for all employees.
Once the storm has passed and everyone is safe, the real test for a business begins, Bendall said. Between 60 percent and 65 percent of small businesses don’t reopen after a disaster.
“Lots of times, people don’t realize flood insurance is not a normal part of insurance,” Bobel said. “Here in Lexington, [if] there’s a heavy rain, you get some flooding, your business gets four to eight inches… When there’s a heavy rain event, that’s one of the things we hear most often ... There’s water damage and they call their insurance agent and they hear — much to their dismay — ‘I’m sorry, you don’t have flood insurance and we can’t help you.’”
“March is a good time for businesses to go through and have a talk with whoever their insurance provider is,” Bobel said in referencing March as Severe Storm Awareness Month.
Unlike in some areas, flood insurance is available in Lexington, but many see it as a cost prohibitive option. In that case, Bendall said simple measures can still make a difference, such as making sure vital phone and computer systems are far enough off the ground so as not to get wet if the waters pour in. Furniture, carpets and walls may be expensive to replace, but as long as computers and phones remain, a business can work from temporary space.
Documents are also something that not only should remain dry but should be protected against total obliteration of a building. Uploading important materials to a cloud service like Google Docs can keep important information safe as it is backed up on a series of computers around the world, Bobel said. In the case of a Joplin- or Tuscaloosa-type tornado, backing up files to an external hard drive next to your computer won’t cut it.
Natural disasters that strike states or oceans away can prove as harmful to a business as ones that level their own facilities, Bendall said.
A company like Toyota proved capable of weathering the double whammy last year of the Japan earthquake and tsunami, followed later in 2011 by floods in Thailand, crippling supply lines. But a small company might not be so lucky.
“Businesses should identify either people or suppliers or processes that are critical to their survival and figure out what they would do if one of those things was just gone forever,” she said. “If they have a critical supplier and that supplier is hit by an EF5 tornado, what are you going to do? You’ve got to figure out backup methods or redundancies to make sure they can accomplish those critical tasks.”