Crashing at friend’s houses, blessing our gas stoves and plugging into trees, New Yorkers are all wondering – why does it take the power so long to go back on?

Continue reading Hurricane Sandy Power Outages: Why It Takes Con Edison Days To Get The Lights Back On

Tags: Con Ed, Con Ed Plant, Con Edison, Con Edison Power Outage, Frankenstorm 2012, Hurricane Sandy 2012, Hurricane Sandy Power, Hurricane Sandy Power Outages, natural disasters, New York City Grid, New York City Power, New York City Restore Power, NYC Grid, NYC Power, power outage, Power Outage Manhattan, power outages, Restore Power New York City, Sandy Hurricane, Technology News, video

Increasing numbers of weather-related disasters — violent storms, wildfires that have ravaged more than 2 million acres in the Rocky Mountains, and drought conditions affecting some two-thirds of the United States — should have IT executives scurrying to update their disaster recovery plans.

Continue reading Disaster recovery plans get new urgency

Tags: climate change, Disaster Recovery, natural disasters, regional disasters, weather

Emergency managers wanting to help the public recognize the threat of earthquakes need look no further than a map that shows the locations of the world’s earthquakes since 1898.

Continue reading Map Visualizes a Century of Earthquakes

Tags: Earthquakes, map, natural disasters, natural hazards, risk map

New technology is allowing emergency officials in North Carolina to develop more effective evacuation plans in the case of a hurricane. New evacuation zones have been developed, taking into account new data available about tidal surges when hurricanes hit the coastline.

Continue reading New Technology Changes Approach to Hurricane Evacuations

Tags: hurricanes, natural disasters

The enormous fault off 
the coast of the Pacific Northwest has been silent for three centuries. But after years of detective work, geologists have 
discovered that it can
 unleash mayhem on 
an epic scale.

Continue reading The Giant, Underestimated Earthquake Threat to North America

Tags: disaster preparedness, Earthquakes, natural disasters

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

The recent flooding in Queensland, Australia has provided a perfect demonstration of the need for financial services firms to have appropriate procedures in place to ensure business continuity.

Continue reading Floods test contingency plans

Tags: flooding, floods, natural disasters

Aon Benfield has released its latest Monthly Cat Recap report, which provides an analysis of global natural disasters in October including events in parts of the US, North America, Asia, Oceania, Europe and Africa.

Continue reading Aon Benfield’s latest recap report on global natural disasters

Tags: AON Benfield, forecasting, natural disasters, Risk Management

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

Having a strong continuity plan in place means that a natural disaster doesn’t have to be a complete catastrophe for your business.

Continue reading How to Build a Business Continuity Plan

Tags: Business Continuity, natural disasters, natural hazards

When the ash cloud from Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano shut down air travel across Europe and beyond, the business continuity plans of stranded British comedian John Cleese included hiring a Mercedes cab and forking over the roughly $5,000 fare to get him where he needed to go. “How do you get God to laugh? Tell him your plans,” he quipped.

Continue reading Business continuity plans must address massive air travel shutdown

Tags: Business Continuity, Eyjafjallajokull, natural disasters, volcano