After our earthquake in January and other 2010 disasters around the world, there should be a greater sensitivity to disaster planning and business continuity planning than normal. It’s good practice to plan ahead and prepare for the worst, both at home and at work. Living on the North Coast, we have storms and earthquakes, but a disaster to some businesses could also be defined as a computer failure or a power outage. If you are a business owner, do you have a business continuity plan?

When I lived in Southern California, I worked for a medical device company. Every year, we had a disaster test day where manual systems were put into place. Orders were taken manually, service calls were taken and tracked manually, then entered into the computer systems the next day. Personnel went to an offsite storage location and tested recovery of data as well. Does your business know how it would operate if some of your critical resources were down?

I am a North Coast Small Business Development Center (SBDC) Business Advisor for the Eel River Valley and Southern Humboldt. The SBDC recently received a news release from the Small Business Administration (SBA) encouraging small businesses to have written disaster preparedness plans in place in case of disaster. “It is critical that small businesses have a written disaster preparedness plan in place so that they are ready to deal with the challenges that often come without notice, and get their businesses back up and running” said SBA Administrator Karen Mills.

The SBA has teamed up with Agility Recovery Solutions, a company providing business continuity and disaster recovery tools to small companies for the past 21 years. Check out www.preparemybusiness.org/ for the SBA/Agility resources. This web site has tons of helpful resources for planning, education, testing, and disaster assistance.

Agility’s planning checklists include: critical business functions, risk assessment, vendor assessment, emergency communications plan, phone recovery, earthquakes, and on and on. There is a testing checklist. Their online presentation topics include planning and testing. There are links to information about SBA disaster assistance funding.

Here’s a quick reminder of what a disaster plan includes:

Written disaster plan. This can include evacuation routes and pre-arranged meeting place; a designated person to communicate with employees, customers, and vendors; a designated person out of state to be a point of contact.

Insurance. Having adequate insurance coverage to rebuild your business or home is critical. Review your insurance policy to see what is not covered. Are you aware there is “business interruption” insurance? If flooding is a risk for you, visit www.floodsmart.gov.

Records. Do you have your electronic documents backed up and stored at a remote offsite location? Are your critical paper records copied and stored in a safe deposit box or fireproof safe.

Survival kit. The Red Cross at www.redcross.org/ has a list of items that should be in disaster kits, both at home and at work. If you and employees are stranded at work, food/water and other supplies become very important.

The North Coast SBDC has expertise to assist you in your business planning. Check us out at www.northcoastsbdc.org. If you are interested in technology, you should check out the Redwood Technology Consortium (www.redwoodtech.org) to find like-minded folks.

Tina Nerat is a member of the Redwood Technology Consortium. She owns NERATECH, a technology consulting business.

Copyright 2010 Eureka Times-Standard Newspaper. The print version of this article first appeared in the 8/5/10 edition of the Times-Standard.