Emergency Preparedness Week May 4 to May 10

Once again the annual Emergency Preparedness week is taking place in Canada.

The Canadian government publishes pamphlets and checklists to try to raise awareness that everyone should prepare home and car emergency kits containing food water, safety equipment, clothes and other items that a family would need to survive for 72 hours on their own should an emergency occur.

While 72 hours sounds like it should be more than enough time before the emergency services clean up the emergency and life gets back to normal, I believe that families should actually prepare for a longer time frame. I would suggest closer to a week to 10 days.

Once an emergency is declared, your mobility along with the capability of stores to be re-supplied may be severely restricted. Areas may be flooded, they may be quarantined and no traffic is allowed into the area, there just may not be any power so everything is forced to remain closed.

So how do you prepare to survive for 10 days? You start by buying additional items for your pantry every time you shop. You add an extra can of food, an extra roll of paper towels, buy plastic bags for your waste and gradually build up your supplies.

You also need to think about how you will obtain any medications that you will need. Your family doctor maybe part of the emergency response and not be available to see you, you may not be able to see him anyway as travel may be restricted. While it may not be possible to stockpile medications, you should at least have this discussion with your family doctor to see what could be done during an emergency.

Also consider having a list of your primary contacts including your insurance agent, available as part of your emergency evacuation kit. Depending on the emergency, your home may experience damage which will need to be addressed once the emergency is over and you are allowed back home.

Don’t forget your pets, they will need food and water as well.

If you have to evacuate your home, you should consider where you are being evacuated to. How will your pets be received?

You can obtain more information and download the pamphlets and checklists at Getprepared.ca

You never know when an emergency could happen, get prepared now.

Other reasons to implement Business Continuity planning

What are the reasons that you develop business continuity plans for your company?

Sure there are the usual reasons; if a disaster strikes we will be able to continue operations. We need it to get government contracts. It differentiates us from our competition. It is good business sense to plan for the unexpected.

How about gaining a better understanding of your business? How about helping to make strategic business decisions?

According to a survey conducted by Marsh, an insurance and risk company in the UK, many businesses are now looking at business continuity planning as something more than just a compliance or insurance issue. They are looking at this planning as a good practice to manage their overall operational risk.

These companies can use this planning to spot risky interdependencies, better allocate resources to key processes and activities and improve risk management in their companies.