Published October 2005

Preparing now for
disaster is the best plan

When a natural disaster strikes somewhere, there is a brief window of opportunity to get us to think about our own preparations. During the peak television coverage of Hurricane Katrina and its immediate aftermath, for example, anyone going door-to-door in our neighborhood could have sold truckloads of first aid kits, flashlights and MREs (“meals ready to eat”). As time passes, though, we lose our sense of urgency about being prepared. We prefer not to think about something bad happening to us.

While the impressions are still vivid, then, we should act. There is a lot of useful advice out there about how to prepare your home for an emergency, including lists of equipment and stuff you should keep on hand. Do it now.

For most of us, though, there is a good chance that when a disaster hits we won’t be home — we’ll be at work. Most of us spend a good part of our day at work, and those of us who own, run or manage businesses probably spend a lot of extra hours there. And since our geographic area faces two types of natural disaster threat for which little warning is available — earthquakes and volcanic eruptions — there are pretty good odds that you will be at work, not at home, when something hits.

For those of us with management responsibilities, then, it isn’t enough to prepare our homes and families; we’ve got to think of our businesses and our workers, too. And that means being ready to deal not only with physical damage but also with human and economic issues.

On the physical damage side, generally speaking, the same emergency equipment lists for home are just as useful in the workplace. Some, like a good first-aid kit, are probably already in place. Additionally, though, make sure that your emergency kit includes a pry bar, crow bar or wrecking bar of some sort — the bigger the better. Many types of emergencies, but especially earthquakes, fires and floods, can distort door and window frames and effectively seal them shut, and you will need something besides your muscles to get them open.

It also doesn’t hurt to throw in a small plastic bottle of water and a few bandanas and handkerchiefs into your emergency kit. Use the water to dampen the cloths if you have to use them as breathing masks. Depending on the emergency, you can’t count on having running water.

What you can count on is that you will probably lose power. Depending on the time of day, and season of the year, that may result in anything from dimly lit corners to total, inky blackness. Be generous in adding flashlights and batteries to your emergency kit. Most of us are not used to being immersed in darkness, and it raises our anxiety level — not generally a good thing, and certainly not helpful in making decisions.

Emergency kits, whether at home or in the workplace, share a common problem: pilferage. We can’t find a Band-Aid, say, or the workshop flashlight quits, so we “borrow” the one from the kit. To make them useful in emergencies, which arrive without warning — the only kind, in my experience — emergency kits require routine maintenance, if for no other reason to replace the stuff that is “on loan” somewhere.

In addition to the physical side of workplace emergency preparedness — making sure that the people are accounted for and taken care of — there is also the psychological side. Workers will be depending on you to assess the situation and help them make good decisions regarding what to do next and how to cope with their own responsibilities at work and at home. Get in the habit of “reading” people’s stress reactions during the normal give-and-take of the workday. This will help you to assess their mental state during an emergency and also help you to lead them through it.

Your business operations also need planning and preparation for emergencies. Make copies of your key business documents (tax returns, bank account statements, accounts receivable (very important), accounts payable records, etc.) and place them off-site. Most businesses today use computers extensively for their operations, and software programs are available that will automatically duplicate your records every day and provide you with a removable device (a tape or disk) that you can store off-premises. You also can transmit records automatically for storage in other states.

We don’t like to think about emergencies, and it is in our nature to resist planning for them. But as managers, it is our responsibility. It comes with the job.

James McCusker, a Bothell economist, educator and small-business consultant, writes “Your Business” in The Herald each Sunday. He can be reached by sending e-mail to otisrep@aol.com.

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