8 Business Lessons Learned From The Joplin Tornado Disaster

     Thankfully we don’t  have EF5 tornadoes around here in California. We do, however, have seasonal flooding and unpredictable earthquakes. Everyone in the Bay Area knows to have an Emergency Box (a.k.a. Earthquake Box). As business owners, we also need a complete business disaster plan. We can all take Joplin tornado lessons and apply them to our potential business disasters so that we can be as prepared as possible to make any recovery as smooth as possible.

 

1. Don’t get caught off guard when the going is good. Have an offsite copy of all network applications, data and files. Maintain a hard copy of client and vendor contact info. Have in place a line of credit available with vendors or a bank for quick access to funds.

2. One large disaster will always create a domino effect. If a large earthquake hits, a hospital could be destroyed which leads to limited medical care. If utilities go down, phones go offline and there is no communication.

3. Be willing to change quickly when circumstances warrant. Can you move your office to a secondary site? Move in with a friendly competitor? Move your network to a data center? Know your options.

4. Make sure your key personnel can report for duty in time of crisis. Make sure your employees’ families are safe and secure. Your biggest asset is your expert staff.

5. For communication, fixed line services were the most reliable in the immediate aftermath of the tornado. With an Internet connection, social media and online resources were used to get in touch with relatives, friends, employees and colleagues. Cell phones didn’t fare well. 

6. The best planning in the world only gives a mere glimpse into the magnitude of reality. The better your planning, the better off you are when things actually happen. Do you have a back-up and disaster and business continuity plan??

7. Insurance coverage is often inadequate. Know your coverage limits before a disaster strikes and keep up-to-date records of business assets for adjusters. Taking a video tour of your office may be helpful in recording assets.

8. Realize some things will never be the same. It may take months or years for destroyed businesses and services to be rebuilt and opened. Unfortunately some businesses and homes will not be able to rebuild. Can your organization survive a 30% loss of revenue?

First-Hand Backup Disaster and Recovery In Joplin, MO

A Special Letter From Brad Myers

Pictures Below

     Recently Myers Network Solutions received a call for help from one of our IT company marketing partners, John Motazedi, owner of SNC Squared Technology Group in Joplin, MO. On Sunday, May 22nd, SNC Squared along with 20 of their medical-practice client offices were destroyed by the EF5 tornado that ravaged Joplin. SNC Squared’s business was reduced to a pile of rubble. Fortunately, John, his staff and family are all fine but they were faced with a massive effort to get their physician offices back up and running, fast! About a week later Brad and another IT engineer headed to Joplin to help John and his IT staff replace and reload applications of several hundred client PCs, install new routers, firewalls, WAPs, etc. into temporary digs of their physician clients. Below is a letter from Brad describing his experience in Joplin.

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June 5, 2011

Greetings from Dallas on the way back from Joplin. This was truly an amazing trip.

     When I arrived, I got right busy cleaning and testing computers that were in an unbelievably filthy state and got them up and running. Many of them were needed because they had QuickBooks or other accounting software that the users needed so they could get payroll out and patient billings. We used data recovery systems where the hard drive was good but the old computer destroyed and installed he client data on new PCs. John had 30+ Dell PCs delivered and in his garage that he began to deploy as needed. A lot of time was spent getting printers working again (he also had about 15 new printers delivered).

     I took a few pictures (see below) to show the total devastation where there are absolutely no houses standing and all the trees were stripped off the face of the earth or completely denuded. Pictures do not show how bad this really is. I went down street after street just in awe of how much force the tornado had to smash literally everything to the ground in splinters and toss cars around like feathers. Just when I was marveling at this, I came to the top of a hill and could see everything leveled for a mile wide, and out to the horizon as far as I could see was total grey nothing  where over 5,000 houses and businesses once stood.

     SNC Squared us a great example of how disaster recovery is planned for and implemented. John is literally the only IT provider in the medical community who can say that all his clients were up on their servers (20 of his clients’ offices were destroyed) within 56 hours after the tornado. We are proud that we too use some of the same backup and disaster recovery solutions. John is already signing new clients as a result of the word-of-mouth he is getting and write ups in several national features.

     People dealing with the fallout of the tornado will be haunted with various memories. We were speaking with a nurse who was in the hospital at the time on the 7th floor. When a tornado hits, if it is a bad one, they call a “condition grey” which means that they are to immediately move all patients from their rooms into the most interior hallways and bolt all the doors. She was relating that after they had done this, as the tornado hit, it literally felt like an explosion of sound and debris and she covered the patient she was near. When she looked up after the storm passed, looking down the hallway where there had been dozens of patients, not one remained, all sucked out of the hallway – steel doors blown off their hinges and glass and debris everywhere. One family told us that as the tornado passed overhead, they were pinned on their backs to the ground and could see up into the tornado; they could see all the debris and people, hearing their cries and yet they (the family) emerged unharmed. Imagine the hundreds of stories like this…

     So I’ve returned to the Bay Area and am back working with our great MNS clients. What a great country! I met so many amazing volunteers providing clean-up help, medical services, pet care, etc. to the Joplin residents. I came away from Joplin with an improved business continuity plan for MNS and our clients; nothing like cleaning up from a real disaster to see areas of improvement. And I have a greater appreciation for the backup and recovery solutions and equipment we’ve installed in our client locations.

All the best,  Brad Myers

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