Preparing for the worst
Small businesses urged to have disaster-recovery plan
BY PETER HULL
The Post and Courier
As Hurricane Hugo approached Charleston in September 1989, local business owner Dottie Karst sprang into action.
Karst, who is in the employee-placement business, loaded her car with files - lists of clients, payroll records and names of companies that owed her money - and headed inland. She prepared her North Charleston office as best she could by moving equipment and files off the floor and onto desks.
Hugo hit shortly before midnight on Sept. 21, 1989. By the following Monday, Karst was back in town and back in business.
Her plan wasn't watertight, but at least she had a plan.
As a rule of thumb, 40 percent of businesses fail to recover from major disasters, said Stephen Jordan, executive director of the Business Civic Leadership Center at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington.
In the Gulf Coast town of Waveland, Miss., for example, 800 of 1,400 businesses remain after the town was severely damaged last year by Hurricane Katrina, Jordan said.
South Carolina officials are busy revising the state's Recovery Plan for preparing and coping with disasters. The new plan should be ready in about three months, officials said last week.
Critics said the plan will be released too late for this year's storm season. They point to North Carolina, where that state's document was published in June, the beginning of storm season.
Karst said a statewide plan will prove to be a valuable tool if it helps keep businesses afloat. She hopes she won't need to use it, but after Hugo, she knows better than just to hope.
"I'm from New England," Karst said last week. "I can handle 25 inches of snow, but I had no idea what a hurricane was like. It was devastating."
Unfortunately, many business owners overlook disaster planning, said Milton Lawson, Charleston area manager for the Small Business Development Council.
Owners invest time and money to get their businesses off the ground, he said, but they don't always consider they could lose it all if a major storm or other disaster hits the region.
"The mentality is, 'It won't happen to me - and I'm very busy,' " Lawson said.
The development council supports a state approach similar to North Carolina, where the governor's office produced a 160-page manual to help small businesses prepare for and recover from disasters.
Called the North Carolina Disaster Recovery Guide, the document is billed as a critical resource for state and local leaders who manage, organize and oversee disaster recoveries.
"Over the years, North Carolina has learned many valuable lessons about disaster recovery," Gov. Mike Easley said in a statement when the guide was published. "This guide, which will be continually updated, will help make sure that, if a disaster strikes, communities have the most up-to-date information on where to turn for assistance."
South Carolina's revised Recovery Plan will be similar to the Tarheel State's version, said Ron Osborne, the state's emergency management director.
The document will include resources for federal disaster assistance programs and Small Business Administration loans, and information on essential services such as utilities and insurance.
A committee that included the state departments of commerce and transportation, regional emergency managers and relief charities such as the Red Cross and Salvation Army provided recommendations of what the plan should include, Osborne said.
The new document won't be ready in time for this year's Atlantic tropical storm season, the most likely disaster to affect the state. The storm season runs June 1-Nov. 30. "In terms of a state plan, it's too late," Lawson said.
In the meantime, local business owners and officials are taking steps of their own to prepare for what most experts consider the inevitable.
The Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce, for instance, is teaming up with the public-private National Council on Readiness and Preparedness to organize a disaster response and recovery workshop, said chamber spokeswoman Pennie Bingham.
While that workshop won't happen until November, some businesses already are ahead of the game.
At Automated Trading Desk in Mount Pleasant, a stock-trading firm that buys and sells about 250 million shares on an average day, officials have implemented a series of measures that will keep the company's trading floor alive, albeit virtually.
The company of 100 employees executes 6 percent of Nasdaq trades and 7 percent on the New York Stock Exchange, said Peter Kent, ATD's chief financial officer. At that level of activity, the market and the firm's bottom line could be affected if the company went offline for an extended period, he said.
To that end ATD leases a small office in Columbia, where it can operate remotely in case of a hurricane or other natural disaster, Kent said. Also, all of the company's computer data is backed up off-site.
And while ATD's state-of-the-art office in Mount Pleasant was built to withstand a Category 4 storm, the company said its top priority is to get workers out in time to evacuate, he said.
Images from Louisiana and Mississippi last year drove home the importance of planning, Kent said.
"There's no question the events surrounding Katrina on the Gulf Coast helped focus our thoughts," he said. "Those who had a plan were able to continue after the storm."
As Chris, the season's third named storm, stirred up hurricane concerns last week, Karst was grateful for Hugo's lesson.
Seventeen years later, her business, Charles Foster Co. on Rivers Avenue, is alive and well.
She owns the office building she occupies today, unlike her rented premises of 1989. That in itself brings added responsibility beyond the safety of her 14 in-house employees, she said. Among the other issues she must consider as a building owner: having adequate insurance, emergency power and off-site data storage.
She even picked up two rotary telephones at a yard sale that plug into a wall phone jack. Hugo taught her that although phones may work after a hurricane, electronic switchboards do not.
The truth is that without a disaster plan, firms will sink, said John Lenti, state director of the Small Business Development Center. And in a state where the overwhelming majority of employers are small businesses, South Carolina can't afford to be unprepared, Lenti said.
"Otherwise, we'll look like what Mississippi looks like right now," he said.
Protect your investment
Insurance coverage: Policies vary, so meet with your insurer to review existing coverage.
Evacuation: Have a plan and know where your employees are staying.
Utility disruptions: Prepare for extended outages during and after a disaster. Consider buying a back-up generator.
Equipment: Conduct a room-by-room walk-through to determine what needs to be secured.
Cyber security: Protect data and information technology systems. Keep a back-up copy of data off site.
On the Web
To read the 2006 North Carolina Disaster Recovery Guide, visit: www.osbm.state.nc.us/disaster.
To read the 2005 South Carolina Recovery Plan, visit:
www.scemd.org/Plans/recoveryplan.pdf.
For more information on disaster preparedness and recovery, visit: www.ready.gov.
Reach Peter Hull at 937-5594 or phull@postandcourier.com. |
