How should a business plan for a disaster such as pandemic flu? An informal poll: How many business owners out there would say they have a diasater plan ready and accessible??

[Johnnie Mesaros]

An article published in the Washington Post last week pointed out that less than one-third of businesses have any type of plan. Former US Secretary of Health, Tommy Thompson points out why companies can't ignore this vital issue. I'm convinced, but as a small business owner, what resources are available to help start the planning process.?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/01/AR2...

[Johnnie Mesaros]

The following answer was posted by one of my LinkedIn contacts, Stanislav Popov
Operations Coordinator at United Healthcare
I'm not a business owner, but Disaster Recovery and Preparedness is part of my current responsibilities. A couple of things you may want to consider:
- Escalation procedure and contact tree
- Capability of business operations proceeding with employees working from home
- Availability of your business' vital records and data if the office / main storage is declared to be in a Disaster area or otherwise inaccessible

Hope his helps.

[Dan R]

There are a lot of concerns to account for when answering this question.

First, the business needs to have a holistic business resiliency plan, not just a plan to survive a disaster, but a plan to continue to work through the disaster. This is accomplished through all hazards planning. In addition to the all hazards planning, Pan Flu brings up other cascading events:
-Critical infrastructure needs will suffer (electric, gas, water, phone, etc)
-lack of available day care so that even if employees are not sick, if their daycare providers are shut down, they cannot come to work.
-workers who are not sick may have to care for family members who are sick
-the worried well will avoid coming to work as the media sensationalizes the initial onset of the pandemic
-shortages of necessary supplies to the business because the other businesses you rely upon are "out sick"
-what will be the effect on your business of slowed package delivery when USPS, FedEx, and UPS employees are sick?

Much is made about "working from home"; however, the nation's infrastructure is not set up to support 50% of the workforce "dialing in" from home. The electrical utilities send the predominance of power to business centers during the day and to homes during the evening. The same happens with phone service. The additional fact is that the employees of the utility companies will also be "out sick", degrading system maintenance and availability/reliability. The federal response framework and state governments will ensure critical infrastructure and key resources have first shot at the necessary utilities to operate.

As the nation is sent into a tail spin from the Pan Flu, prices for commodities will spike, air travel will come to a grinding halt for fear of spreading or contracting the disease on a flying cylinder of aluminum, which will cascade into tourism revenue grinding to nothing. Gasoline will go through the stratosphere (as if that isn't already an issue), the dollar will weaken further...and...what if al Qaeda takes this opportunity to strike? They can hit oil production facilities, attack the airlines, go after a water supply systems or one of 15-20 other scenarios that will cripple the mindset of the average US citizen.

In short, Pan Flu is one aspect of emergency planning. It should be taken in to consideration after the organization has developed a robust plan for handling all types of hazards (fire, flooding, other natural and manmade disasters). Only after a core program is founded can the intricacies of Pan Flu planning really begin to be explored and built in to the organizational emergency operations plan.

Guidance is available from several resources:
NFPA 1600-2007 version, which is the national consensus standard on emergency and business continuity planning (you can obtain it for free at the NFPA website www.nfpa.org specifically at http://www.nfpa.org/aboutthecodes/AboutTheCodes.asp?DocNum=1600 )

The industry standard for certification of Business Continuity Planners is run by www.drii.org

The International Association of Emergency Managers (www.iaem.com) also has resources.

Of course there is www.fema.gov

The CDC has a site: http://www.pandemicflu.gov/index.html which will also allow you to track down the state information for where you reside.