Will Your Business Be Prepared When Disaster Strikes?

Can your business survive a major earthquake along the Seattle Fault? If transportation, communication and energy lifelines are disrupted for two weeks, will you be able to quickly resume operations? When it comes to disaster, it is not a matter of if, but when. When disaster strikes, it WILL negatively impact your business. Minimize downtime and loss by developing a Continuity of Operations/Emergency Management plan.

If you have never considered this, the bad news is you have work to do.  The good news is that there are many free resources that you can use to get you started.  Some of you may have already thought about disaster and developed a Crisis Communications Plan, which is very similar. By taking the time to plan now, before a crisis, you can not only better prepare for when disaster strikes, but also resume operations more quickly, thus staving off sharp losses.

Since 1991, Kitsap County has been proactively working to build capacity and resilience in the business community. Kitsap County developed the K-PREP (Kitsap Practices Responsible Emergency Preparedness) Business Training Program to provide consistent and coordinated emergency training across all business and community sectors. A model plan is provided as a guide to help businesses write a basic Business Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan. This plan is available through the Kitsap County Department of Emergency Management website under K-PREP Business Plan.

Additionally, The Washington State Emergency Management Division operates a business portal, which serves as a one stop destination for businesses to access information and templates for the development of business COOP, Emergency Management and other plans.

Finally, the federal government has business planning templates and other information available at their Ready.gov website.  From the Business Continuity Suite link, you can download templates, training videos and other material relevant to the planning process. 

http://www.kitsapdem.org/emergency-plans.aspx

http://www.ready.gov/business-continuity-planning-suite