Reply to post: Re: Been there - almost

Re: Been there - almost

The primary concern for government officials is human safety. Following that is safety of property. Business Continuity comes in a distant third. And, given the funding levels that most government agencies have to work with, it's rather amazing that they do as well as they do. Further adding to the problem is that a lot of the citizens think that, in any disaster, the government will step in and fix everything, thus requiring them to do no preparation for any type of disaster at all. Unfortunately, that's usually the farthest thing from the truth.

As for my background, not only have I worked for 32+ years as a technical professional (mostly in IT), but I also spent 8+ years as a volunteer on a local governmental emergency response team. The first disaster I worked involved a semi-truck spilling 5000 gallons of an unknown chemical into a local creek, which supplied water for a large number of towns and cities. We had over 21 different agencies responding to that event, everyone from county constables up through the federal EPA. And, it seemed that every agency had their own idea of how to handle the situation. Heck, some of them became belligerent, and there was some danger of fist-fights breaking out between various agency officials. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed, and we were able to get the various agency heads to sit down and and come up with a unified response plan (Hint: It helps to ask "Who's going to pay for this?". It also helps to know the various statutes regarding who is in charge of a scene, and the statute that allows for unhelpful people to be detained or arrested.).

There was also a lot of misinformation that flowed from this event, despite the best efforts of the public information officer (PIO) to release the true facts, at least as best as were known at the various times. Compounding this were problems with various reporters penetrating the site to get their own stories, and, in the process, becoming contaminated with the unknown chemical, and spreading it around, thus making the cleanup effort worse.

Our main concern, during this event, was the safety of people who derived their water supply from the stream in question. We really didn't have the resources to devote to business continuity efforts until well after the event (e.g., many days later). We did attempt to notify local farmers of the problem, so that their livestock herds weren't affected.

We did have communication problems, since all of the various agencies did not have a common radio frequency which could be used to communicate with them. This was over 20 years before Katrina, so it has been an ongoing problem. Steps were supposedly taken following Katrina to alleviate this problem, but these solutions require money, and, while as there has been some constructive efforts, the emphasis on such communications coordination seems to be waning again.

So, the net result is that the governments will do what they can to assist following a disaster, but, for the most part, businesses, as well as the citizens, will be on their own for quite some time. Thus, it makes sense for everyone, both businesses as well as citizens, to adequately prepare for disasters. That means developing a plan, taking actions before the event, and then testing the preparations periodically. Such actions are not cheap, but they are a lot cheaper than not performing them.

Dave