How To Prepare Your Business To Survive a Hurricane

2/16/2023 (Permalink)

Taking these simple steps can help businesses survive the impact of hurricane damage.

Getting a Business Ready to Survive a Hurricane

Each year, billions of dollars in damage is caused by the high winds of hurricanes and other severe storms. Three-quarters of small businesses close within three years of experiencing hurricane damage or destruction from similar natural disasters. There are steps every business owner can take to help avoid joining these dire statistics.

Develop a Plan
Business owners should assess their risk of being affected by hurricane damage and develop a plan to prepare long before facing this eventuality. Preparedness plans should address issues that will impact the business's ability to function, which includes several concerns:

• Maintaining current contact information for employees
• Taking steps to protect the business premises, including boarding windows and doors, clearing drains, shutting off process piping that carries flammable gas or liquids, safely shutting down production lines, and turning off the electricity to non-critical equipment
• Taking steps to protect the business’ equipment by anchoring heavy furniture to studs and strapping down electronics
• Protecting important documents or maintaining duplicates off-site
• Ensuring that fuel tanks of company vehicles and generators are filled
• Confirming that fire protection equipment is in good working order

Put Your Business Back to Work
Preparedness plans should also address ways to minimize the length of time that the business operations will be interrupted. The use of a qualified recovery team will go a long way toward getting businesses running again as quickly as possible after a disaster. There are also steps you can take:

• All damage should be documented for insurance purposes.
• Prioritize locating and repairing potential safety hazards.
• Make temporary repairs to damaged building walls.
• Assess damage to equipment to determine what can be salvaged.
• Contact information can be used to ensure that employees are safe and to keep critical staff apprised of the status of clean-up.

It is incumbent upon all business owners to keep informed of a storm’s progress so that this preparedness plan can be executed efficiently in the event of a natural disaster. Taking these simple steps can help businesses survive the impact of hurricane damage.