OEM: Small Businesses Must Be Prepared For Disaster

In the past decade, New York City, or parts of it, has endured emergencies ranging from blackouts to enemy attack. September 11 is a mammoth example of explosive damage, but even if that never reoccurs, New Yorkers are bound to suffer smaller events such as the summer 2007 steam pipe blast near Grand Central. The entire city was darkened in the regional blackout of 2003, but businesses and residences in Northwest Queens also suffered the electrical grid failure of July 2006. Hurricanes hardly happen here, but severe rainstorms and consequent flood damage do. Water mains break and fires break out in all weathers.

Addressing the effect of such disasters in a late October breakfast meeting at Sunnyside Senior Services, Aaron Stanton, a public and private initiatives analyst in the city’s Office of Emergency Management, said it is imperative that small business owners take measures to prepare themselves for them. At an event sponsored by the Long Island City Business Development Corporation, the LIC Business Improvement District and the Sunnyside Chamber of Commerce, Stanton brought up what he called a sobering fact: a quarter of small businesses that go through significant disasters are ruined, and do not reopen. Avoiding such a calamity takes business continuity planning, he stressed. Small business owners and proprietors should (1) assess the hazards most likely to happen to them, (2) have a plan of action for the time any one of them might occur, (3) instruct employees about the possibilities of disasters and how they should conduct themselves, should any one of them strike, (4) protect their investment and (5) know how to respond.

This entails determining what is paramount to keeping businesses open in the aftermath of the emergency. Business owners must determine which persons other than themselves can handle operations if they become unable to or are forced to handle some facet of the emergency that takes them away from normal control. Rosters of customers and suppliers should be kept and an understanding should be reached about how all parties would act during emergencies. (Stanton related the sad story of the coffee-and-sandwich shop near Grand Central whose bread supplier unquestioningly delivered a shipment even after the steam pipe had exploded in 2007. The disaster persisted and a lot of bread was spoiled.) Owners should be aware of their employees’ situations, should disaster occur while they are away from the work place and they must be instructed about how to report to work or perhaps not report at all. As a precaution in case disaster strikes during work hours, evacuation routes should be clear; if a certain door is always locked against the possibility of thievery, the emergency escape route should not include it, Stanton said.

Vital documents (legal and financial, for example) should be backed up and stored offsite, Stanton told his audience. That way, business owners will have them when they need them—and they’ll certainly need them post-emergency, when loans for repairs go only to those who have their records in order. Of course, there’s also the mandate of insurance, which Stanton called “a nonnegotiable cost for doing business in New York City”. In addition to the normal fire and flood insurance, business interruption insurance has become necessary, he added.

Stanton also mentioned CEAS, the Corporate Emergency Access System, which bestows credentials on vital employees so they are able to enter restricted areas during an emergency. That and CorpNet, which issues round-the-clock information about pending and possible disasters and emergencies, are mainly for larger businesses. CEAS, the only program of its kind sanctioned by OEM and the Police Department, is commercial; CorpNet is maintained by the OEM Watch Command and is free. There is also NotifyNYC, OEM’s online and texting service that reports mishaps and events, from gas explosions to filmmaking flyovers. And no lecture about emergencies would be complete without mention of a Go Bag, the container with basic goods, for use when an emergency could leave its unfortunate participants isolated from rescue in the immediate aftermath. Stanton said that these bags, which ideally should be issued to every employee, should above all contain batteryoperated radios and a flashlight, though such items as bottled water, dry and nonperishable food and a first aid kit are also vital.

Stanton made sure to mention that there is literature available about emergencies and the way both businesses and residents can deal with them. “Ready New York for Business” and simply “Ready New York”, a guide for residents, and “Assets Access & Information” can be obtained by calling 311 (hearing impaired via TTY, 212-504-4115) and requesting them.