With hurricane season upon us, it’s important to not only prepare your home but your business as well. Getting ahead of the game and doing what you can to prevent damage will save you in the long run. We have experienced some strong hurricanes in the previous years, so this one is important! Here are a few tips on how to prepare your business for a hurricane.
In our previous blog about what to expect with the 2021 hurricane season, we discussed how experts are expecting this hurricane season to be quite active. It started in June and will continue until the end of November. At this point, we have already seen some devastating loss from Hurricane Ida, and our thoughts are with all of those affected.
Plan Plan Plan!
The most important part of this process is to create a plan! Not only for your employees, but for your business too. Create a plan of how you can continue business operations if you were to be out of the office for an extended period of time. Gather and prepare equipment for remote work, store your data in a secure and accessible place (more to come on that) and create an emergency response team that is available to answer questions and keep operations running smoothly.
Protect Your Property
Securing your site facilities is also imperative to prevent any damage from the storm. Get your roof inspected for any areas where water could seep in. Cut down any trees or branches that pose a threat of falling on your building. Board up your windows and doors to prevent impact from flying debris and consider putting sandbags in front of entrances. Secure your electronics and turn off all building utilities. It is also a good idea to secure a reliable generator, some batteries and separate water source to use in the case of lost power. Additionally, a gasoline powered pump can help keep lower levels of your building free from any flood water. Lastly, make sure to review and gather information about your insurance policies related to storms and storm damage.
Protect Your Data
It is recommended that you back up any important company data in multiple locations. At the office, in a remote location (external harddrive) and in the cloud to make sure you don’t lose anything. You also might want to consider moving important physical assets such as tax returns, accounting statements, insurance documents and any legal contracts to a more secure location, or even digitizing them.
We pray for a calm hurricane season, but prepare just in case. You can check out the Red Cross website for more preparedness tips, and visit the FEMA site for information on hurricane planning and response. Please let us know if you have any more questions on how to prepare your business for a hurricane.