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After Disaster Strikes How Do You Recover - Page 2

© Greg Sharpe

The only information, which may have been lost, was information that had not been entered into the computer, or documents like medical records submitted for claims. That was the majority of the information that would have to be submitted again. The Federal Employees Credit Union, housed in the federal building, also reopened quickly following the bombing. Within eight hours of the blast, officials of the credit union selected a new site, arranged for telephone and computer systems and retrieved account data which was stored off-site. They reopened in their new location on April 21, just two days after the blast. Volunteers and temporary workers staffed the business, since 18 of the credit union's 33 employees died in the explosion and five were hospitalized. In addition, most area banks - which are required by law to have backup plans - were back to business as usual by that Thursday.

Although the world trade center attacks affected more businesses most of them were larger companies that had backup plans in place and workloads were The large businesses' fights for recovery were in no way easy, but, because of contingency planning, they were manageable. The story is very different for many of the smaller businesses of the Oklahoma City bombing. Most of the affected businesses did not have any type of recovery plan in place before the bombing.

What can a business do? A small business can buy insurance and often recover from damages and economic loss but what about reconstructing your operations, rebuilding your files, and even training employees. Personal experience of losing a key leader has changed the way I look at daily operations completely. One day you’re watching operations run smoothly and the next you are faced with picking up where they left off and getting back to work.

The Small Business Association offers two types of business loans for small businesses they are Business Physical Disaster Loans, which are loans to businesses to repair or replace disaster damages to property owned by the business, including real estate, machinery and equipment, inventory and supplies. Businesses of any size are eligible. Then there are Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL), which provides working capital to small businesses and small agricultural cooperatives to assist them through the disaster recovery period. EIDL assistance is available only to applicants with no credit available elsewhere.

Some Businesses can’t really plan to recovery every aspect of their operations and even what they were working on for weeks up to the disaster. If you are in the business of printing or developing original artwork, its not often you have the time or money to create two of each product, especially original artwork, then it wouldn’t be original. Even though its hard to for see, your business should at least sit down with employees and develop a comprehensive disaster recovery plan and store it off-site.

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