ATLANTIC HURRICANE SEASON STARTS JUNE 1, 2012. ARE YOU READY?

YOU WILL BE WITH THIS NEW TEMPLATE!

If your business faces a serious flood or hurricane threat, this “master of disaster” toolkit helps you quickly develop a clear, comprehensive, and actionable plan to…

• Protect in place or relocate employees to alternate locations to conduct mission-critical operations — and communicate with them before, during and after a flood or hurricane.
• Reduce any downtime that affects cash flow, customer satisfaction, or supply chain partnerships.
• Minimize damage to facilities, files, IT systems, and other equipment.

 Template for Hurricane and Flood Business Continuity Planning:

Enhancing Your Organization’s Resilience

2nd Edition

 By Douglas M. Henderson

 ISBN 978-1-931332-60-6, ©2012, $49

This practical package contains 190 pages and 5 files teeming with extensively field-tested and editable templates, forms, and checklists you can customize for your organization, including:

• Standard Business Continuity Plan (BCP) language that enables you to easily review, edit and customize text.
• Author’s Notes and easy-to-follow Update Instructions that guide you in selecting what to include and why.
• Planning templates written in easy-to-edit Microsoft Word.
• Step-by-step guidance through all phases of developing a comprehensive Hurricane and Flood BCP:

• Hurricane & Flood BCP features 12 defined steps (before, during and after disaster periods) and a detailed analysis of applicable strategies and procedures necessary to execute a successful business recovery.
• Facilities Department Plan features execution steps and extensive checklists of supplies and services, plus building preparation and recovery steps.
• Human Resources Plan provides detailed procedures for maintaining communications with employees at multiple remote locations and restoring the workforce after a disaster.
• Information Technology Disaster Recovery Plan maintains critical technology and communication support services from remote locations.
• Employee Preparation and Response Plan provides critical personal preparation information and pre-positioning in remote locations.

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Just open the easy-to-use Microsoft Word template and follow it page-by-page, editing and customizing it to reflect the specific needs of your organization. Instructions on how to fill in your company’s information are color-coded.

Author Doug Henderson is a business continuity/emergency management consultant, and, as a long-time Florida resident, has created hurricane plans for businesses facing Florida’s infamous Hurricane Season. Doug distills his extensive experience to share tools and tips to spare you the costly mistakes that can result from trial and error.

In a short time, you’ll create your comprehensive, tailored hurricane and flood plan, fully customized to your own business. You’ll feel confident, too, that your plan complies with current industry standards and best practices. The template also gives you a no-fuss method to update your plan or expand it to meet new business needs.

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Douglas M. Henderson FSA, CBCP, is President of Disaster Management, Inc. and has 20+years of consulting experience in all areas of Business Continuity and Emergency Response Management. Doug’s clients include Discovery Channel Latin America, Professional Golfers’ Association (PGA), University of Miami, and many other organizations of all sizes. He is co-author of two books: the newly published college textbook (co-authored with Kurt J. Engemann) Business Continuity and Risk Management: Essentials of Organizational Resilience and Is Your Business Ready for the Next Disaster? Doug has also developed a number of BC templates, including Continuity of Operations Plan for Colleges and Universities; Quick and Easy Business Continuity Plan for Your Small Business; and Template for Business Impact Analysis.

Tags: 1-931332-60-6, 1931332606, 978-1-931332-60-6, 9781931332606, disaster preparedness, Douglas Henderson, flood, hurricane, template, Template for Hurricane and Flood Business Continuity

Forecasters who issued dire warnings ahead of the early April tornado outbreak in the Midwest United States deemed the effort a success, largely because dozens of tornadoes hit yet caused only a handful of deaths. But they expressed concern about future public complacency.

Continue reading Could Better Tornado Warnings Cause Complacency?

Tags: disaster preparedness, natural disasters, tornadoes

On Feb. 7, 2011, at 7:45 p.m., smoke detectors were tripped at Pitney Bowes’ largest mail services presort facility in Grand Prairie, Texas, as a fire that started in another company’s nearby facility rapidly spread.

Continue reading Tips for Creating a Plan that Addresses the 3 Key Phases of Business Continuity

Tags: disaster preparedness, Disaster Recovery, fire, Pitney Bowes

Symantec Corp. announced the findings of its 2011 SMB Disaster Preparedness Survey, which measured the attitudes and practices of small- and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) and their customers toward disaster preparedness. The survey findings show that though SMBs are at risk, they are still not making disaster preparedness a priority until they experience a disaster or data loss.

Continue reading Survey: SMBs Not Prepared For Disasters, Don’t Act Until It’s Too Late

Tags: Backup Exec, Backup Exec System Recovery, disaster preparedness, Disaster Recovery, high availability, NetBackup, server management, small- and mid-sized business, smb, storage, storage management, survey, Symantec, Veritas

Hurricane Katrina’s economic impact leaves many questions unanswered. Why were businesses not more prepared to recover quickly and continue operating in the face of this disaster? Why did they not have plans in place to account for and protect employees and their families, keeping them safe and productive?

Continue reading Lessons Learned from Hurricane Katrina: How to Maintain Operations During a Regional Disaster

Tags: disaster preparedness, exposure, hurricane, impact, Katrina, loss, natural disasters

The Disaster Preparedness Summit is a one-day program appearing in several cities that addresses key issues in responding to and managing the effects of disasters.

Continue reading Events: Upcoming Dates, Venues for Disaster Preparedness Summit

Tags: conferences, disaster preparedness, Disaster Recovery, emergency preparedness

On Monday February 23, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) conducted its second public meeting on its Private Sector Preparedness Program (PS-Prep).

Continue reading DHS and FEMA Conduct 2nd Public Meeting on PS-Prep

Tags: Business Continuity Management, DHS, disaster preparedness, FEMA, PS-Prep, Standards

As boy scouts our motto was ‘be prepared’ and we were, for all the ills that we knew might befall a boy scout. When hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in August 2005, FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency), the US Coastguard and the local emergency services were more or less prepared for the hurricane. They understood it would come, do great damage, cause flooding, power outages and massive disruption, and then the wind would abate and the waters would recede. Hurricanes hit the US coastline most years; in risk terms, they are a known unknown.

Oscar Wilde said: “When a love comes to an end, weaklings cry, efficient ones instantly find another love and the wise already have one in reserve.”  Events that can be imagined can be prepared for. The hindsight risk merchants, or the hurlers on the ditch as my granny used to call them, were full of wisdom after the event. They all knew the levees would break and the flood waters would not recede. Such risks could possibly be classed as forgotten known unknowns, forgotten or too costly to mitigate, and therefore the system accepted a tolerate strategy to deal with them.

See Be Prepared, By Gerry Joyce and Paul O’Brien.

Tags: disaster preparedness

March is Severe Weather Preparedness Month.  The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA) of Missouri encourage people to prepare ahead for the worst.

Continue reading FEMA Urges Awareness, Preparation for Tornado Survival

Tags: disaster preparedness, FEMA, tornadoes

An early extended-range forecast for 2009 calls for somewhat above-average Atlantic basin hurricane activity, according to a new report from the Tropical Meteorology Project at Colorado State University.  The report marks the 26th year of the CSU hurricane forecast.

Continue reading Colorado State Publishes 2009 Forecast for Atlantic Hurricane Season

Tags: Business Continuity, disaster preparedness, Disaster Recovery, hurricanes

Seasoned disaster planners get their own houses in order before helping others plan for emergencies. Preparing your own personal emergency Go Bag is a good start. This first level of survival planning assures that you will have some valued personal items and won’t require immediate outside resources if you need to evacuate. You can go out the door in a hurry without making the normal and sometimes fatal blunders of people under extreme duress.

Continue reading Article: Creating a Go Bag

Tags: disaster preparedness, go bag