Steps to Take Five Days Before a Hurricane Strikes

Picture this: You’re enjoying your morning coffee when you receive a weather alert. A hurricane will likely impact your city and therefore, your business. By the time you make it into the office, it’s all anyone is talking about. Before you know it, people are in your office, asking you, “What’s the plan?”

Business continuity (BC) planners are known for being methodical when considering risk vs. reward, starting early and creating plans that require equal parts science, art and experience. However, it’s easy to put off planning for the distant ‘what if’ future and think, ‘Today is not the day an emergency will end my business.’

It’s easy to lose sight of something that likely won’t happen tomorrow or even next month. In fact, most businesses can survive decades without suffering as much as a power outage. But this is becoming increasingly unrealistic to expect. Today’s forward-thinking business leaders are considering every possibility when it comes to business disruption.

A thorough and robust business continuity plan can take months to create and even years to refine. There are many moving parts to consider: evacuation options, remote working facilities, back-up communications, offsite storage, vendor agreements, HR functions, non-standard payroll and many more details.

While waiting until a storm threat has been received is certainly not a best practice for preparedness, there are several things a business can do to protect its operations and employees at the last minute. One key focus should be communication and ensuring there is full transparency and a flow of information. 

Last-Minute Hurricane Safety Plan

Plans will vary based on an organization’s location, size, industry and people, but this plan should serve as a framework to get you started.

Personnel Locations

Find out where personnel will be over the next five days.

• Consider halting travel plans
• Personnel may need to be temporarily relocated
• Determine where each employee resides so vital information can be distributed

Project Status

Figure out what work must be completed in the next five days.

• Helps determine when to release personnel
• Helps to establish evacuation criteria
• Helps to establish what is needed from vendors (who may also be evacuating)

Communicate

Send a message to personnel that includes:

• Storm details
• What the company is doing
• What the employees should do
• Where the employees can get additional information

Monitor

Public agencies often share their actions via the news and Twitter.

• Local agencies to follow: schools, county, police, transportation, weather experts, etc.
• National agencies to follow: National Weather Service (weather.gov), National Hurricane Center (hurricanes.gov), and FEMA (fema.gov)

Document

Record everything you did in this emergency.

• This will allow you to jump-start the response planning before the next emergency
• Pass this along to a professional weather org to better understand your business’ needs and sensitivities

Business and Location-Specific Hurricane Forecasts

In addition to these steps, Chris Hebert, StormGeo’s lead hurricane forecaster, recommends contracting the services of a professional weather organization focused on your business’ needs and sensitivities and will forecast for your specific location(s). “People don’t realize that the National Hurricane Center’s primary responsibility is public safety,” says Hebert. “Issuing advisories and warnings for the general population across broad areas can present challenges to individuals and businesses. It’s unfortunate, but your business is not their concern. Having expert meteorologists provide timely, site-specific and potentially life-saving information that applies to your property, assets, business and employees is invaluable.”

StormGeo works with clients to provide objective support to their response plans—calculating the thresholds for determining both the current phase of the plan, as well as when they will move on to the next phase. This type of detailed, client-specific service can take time to set up. For businesses finding themselves a week away from a major weather event, there is still time to establish site-specific, timely, accurate weather forecasting services. Sign-up is easy and can be done with just a phone call.