If you own or manage a business on or near the Atlantic Ocean, you are aware that the Atlantic Hurricane Season runs from roughly May through November each year. Last year’s hurricane season produced six major hurricanes of Category 3 or higher and racked up $282.16 billion in total damages – the costliest tropical cyclone season on record. The most damaging of these storms, Maria was a Category 5 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 175 mph.
If names like Katrina, Harvey, Sandy, Irma, and Andrew give you pause for concern, you are not alone. I recently had the pleasure of speaking with the owner of a chiropractic practice in the St. Petersburg/ Tampa area who told me about his experience with Hurricane Irma.
In September 2017, Hurricane Irma led to the largest evacuation in Florida’s history, a state boasting more than 6.5 million residents. Irma caused widespread power outages with more than 60% of the state being left without power. This chiropractic practice experienced eight-days without power during which time they were not able to conduct business. The real impact, however, followed in the subsequent months as the practice had to remain closed due to damaged computer hardware, downed software systems, and client record loss.
However, the ultimate impact of Irma wasn’t the disruption of the practice’s time and high monetary costs related to replacing computer hardware, reinstalling software or regaining access to patient data – it was the disruption of the practice’s patients’ visitation habits as they waited for the practice to return to business with all building, systems, and data intact.
While not all businesses are affected equally by disasters, natural and man-made, and not all disasters affect all businesses equally, every business should conduct a business impact analysis to identify single points of failure assuming a variety of likely scenarios.
According to the owner of the chiropractic practice, six-months’ of lost revenue could have been avoided had he considered likely disasters and their impacts on his business.
Corsica Technologies, LLC is a recognized leader as an IT consultant and service provider. We offer both disaster recovery planning, a full range of risk assessments and a comprehensive disaster recovery/business continuity solution backed by a team of highly-certified experts ensuring your business is prepared for the worst.
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