This time of year in Southern California reminds us of the importance of planning for disasters. The recent wildfires this last week have devastated homes and affected thousands of others with planned and unplanned power outages. I’d like to share some thoughts with you to help you prepare both professionally and personally for these types of events.
This is a good time to have a discussion with your team or business unit on what you would do if your building were required to evacuate or experienced a sudden unplanned power outage:
- How do we evacuate?
- What items if any should be taken out of the building?
- How do we communicate to everyone if the power is shut down? Employees, vendors, customers, etc.
- Where should employees go? Do key personnel have the capability to continue business operations (work remotely)
If your phone system and servers are in the Cloud, this gives you the redundancy to keep key operations going during these types of events.
These are just some conversation starters to have with your team, but I suggest you plan a meeting for this topic and have a written plan that is shared with your team. It will result in everyone staying safe and knowing what to do to keep your business communication and key functions operating during an event.
The City of Fontana, alongside Fontana Chamber of Commerce will be holding a meeting about Public Safety Power Shutoffs. Click here for more details.
This past week some of our local neighborhoods were victim to fires and families were woken up at 1 am with only minutes to leave their homes. Unfortunately some of them no longer have a home to return to. It’s important to have a planning discussion with your family as well:
- Do you have backups of your data at home? Are they stored on just an external hard drives or copied to the Cloud? Consider using a good personal grade backup solution like Carbonite for example.
- Are all of your valuables and important documents stored in a fire proof safe?
- Do you have a battery backup or surge protector to safe guard your computer against power outages and surges?
- What items would you take and where would you go if you had to evacuate?
- Safety – make sure all smoke detection equipment is in good order. Ensure your family knows the plan should a sudden disaster occur.
I hope this helps you better prepare yourself and your business if you haven’t already done so. Stay safe and have a great weekend.
Sincerely,
Adrian Francoz
