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Hurricane Conference Helps Businesses Prepare For Disasters
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Published: May 15, 2008
LARGO - Any business, regardless of size, needs to plan for a hurricane, the vice president in charge of disaster planning for Raymond James & Associates said Thursday at a hurricane conference in Largo.
David Schrim, vice president for information technology at Raymond James, said the first step for a business is to assess its risks.
Schrim was addressing a conference aimed at helping small companies prepare for and recover from hurricanes. It was put on by 2-1-1 Tampa Bay Cares.
After determining a risk, such as losing power in a storm, a business owner can accept it, defer it by buying business interruption insurance or mitigate it buy getting a generator, he said.
After determining the risk, the next step is to see which parts of the business are absolutely critical.
Then the owner has to develop a plan to keep those parts of the business functioning. Part of that is deciding who does what and when.
Once a plan is developed, it should be reviewed and practiced at least twice a year. Annually isn't enough, Shrim said.
Another key is to help employees become as prepared as possible for a storm.
Linda Steele of Pinellas Core Management Services attended the conference to refine the nonprofit human services organization's preparation for hurricanes. The agency must be up and running before it can provide services to others.
"In a disaster, we'll have to help ourselves before we help others," she said.
The organization has a hurricane plan, but Steele hoped to get ideas to fill any gaps.
That also was the goal of Peter Keber of Systems Up Computer Services in St. Petersburg.
The small company Keber works for offers computer backup services for medical records.
"We want to make sure we're up-to-date with what everyone else is doing," he said.
The conference organizer, 2-1-1 Tampa BayCares, is a clearinghouse for health and human service information. Established in 2000 by the Federal Communications Commission, the phone number 211 was set aside to help people find services they need 24 hours a day.
It refers to itself as a "find help" or "give help" source and covers Pinellas, Hernando and Citrus counties.
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