Preparing for Disasters

There was a very interesting article in the Sab Bee on 9/25 about the banking industry preparingfor a disaster such as a pandemic.



-- Unfortunately, (in my opinion) the Sac Bee website sucks so bad I can't find a link for the article even though I have the ripped out section in my hands....



But anyway, bans and other financial systems are preparing a 3 week long disaster scenarion to prepare resposes in case of emergency. These exercises include:



Coping with absenteeism: The over 2700 finnacial institutions recieved instrcutions that included assuming that 25% of the work force cannot comne to work. They were given certain letters to ID last names to ensure that the "hypothetical flu" could hit the bank president as well as the teller or janitor. In week two the scenario requies that the absentee rate be 49%



The planner have also proposed deling with shrinking bandwidth as more people try to conduct business from home, tring up the efficiency of transactions, possibly worldwide.



They expect cash withdrawals from ATMs to increase dramatically and considered how to get those machines re-filled with $$ as people are gone. Other interesting stumbles are considered as well.



This all just highlights the need for all of us do give some time and energy to thinking about how to be less caught off gard when something happens. Flood scenarios, home fires, etc. they are all hard to think about, but with some minimum consideration you could save you comany or family some of the pain and headaches of not having food, cash, communications, rendevous sites, etc. planned in advance.



http://www.sba.gov/idc/groups/public/documents/sba_homepage/serv_disaster_ap051707.pdf

http://www.sba.gov/services/disasterassistance/disasterpreparedness/serv_disaster_inthenews.html



Crisies are a lot less devastating when they aren't a total surpirse.