Weathering the storm: What’s your emergency action plan?

It’s that time of year where we need to prepare our community and ourselves for Hurricane Season, a season that if not prepared, can cause devastation and loss of life if a major storm impacts our area.

Although our community has not experienced catastrophic devastation from a major storm, we must find the time to prepare ourselves, our families and our businesses now. A complacent mindset will, no doubt, be detrimental to our area, so let’s take Hurricane Season seriously.

If we take the time to develop and implement an emergency preparedness plan, then our businesses can survive when any kind of disaster strikes.

American businesses form the backbone of the nation’s economy. Small business alone employs half of all private sector workers and provides nearly 45 percent of the nation’s payroll. According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, 40 percent of businesses do not reopen after a disaster and another 25 percent fail within one year. The U.S. Small Business Administration statistics suggest that over 90 percent of businesses fail within two years following the impact of a disaster.

These odds are not very comforting and are extremely eye-opening. But these statistics can be shifted.

How quickly your business can get back after a terrorist attack, fire, flood, tornado or hurricane often depends on emergency planning done today. Though each situation is unique, your business can be better prepared if you plan carefully, put emergency procedures in place and practice for all kinds of disasters.

To survive, business owners must take steps to minimize and weather the effects of a disaster. The first step is understanding your business’s vulnerabilities. Disasters such as wide area flooding or a hurricane certainly make the top list. However, smaller events such as burglary or water damage due to a faulty roof or plumbing can have the same catastrophic result. The second step is to determine the varying impacts to your business. This will support your third step of developing a plan.

I urge you to take the time to conduct your own research for information that supports your unique business safety and security. At the start of every Hurricane Season, various businesses including grocery stores, building supply or home improvement centers, pharmacies, and insurance carriers produce volumes of literature to assist your personal and home preparations.

Unfortunately, complacency is common in today’s society, so let’s not allow complacency to cost us our lives and businesses. Please, dedicate time now to prepare for the next six months.

For more information, please visit: www.mymanatee.org/emergency, www.floridadisaster.org, www.ready.gov and www.tbrpc.org.

This story was originally published June 12, 2016 at 4:06 PM with the headline "Weathering the storm: What’s your emergency action plan?."