DR/BC

In the business world, it’s called “DR/BC”…Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity. In other words, what will you do if your company’s headquarters are blown up in a terrorist activity? Or a flood? Or an earthquake? How will you get people out and keep the company running?

Tamar and I were both in downtown Manhattan on 9/11/01 so we may be a bit more paranoid (well I, not we) than some. Here’s some of what I’ve done.

Emergency Preparedness
We have a family evacuation plan. It has out-of-state contact people who have agreed to serve as operators in the event we can’t get in touch with each other (as was the case on 9/11). It has directions to 2 pre-arranged out-of-the-area safety houses, at people’s home who have agreed to be our common meeting point. It has contact info for other family members and medical information (e.g. I’m on thyroid replacement hormone).

Documentation
I took a video of our home’s valuable belongings and described them as I did. Along with scanned copies of our critical documents (financial and legal, mostly), that’s burned to CD and will be shortly in the safety deposit box (and perhaps a few other locations). We have an extensive list of the location of key financial info (which specific people are authorized/have copies of—more in the event of my sudden incapacitation). I also have a weekly drop-off to ‘off-site’ storage of a disk w/update info.

Survival
We have a “DR” section of our storage area which has 2-4 weeks of food/supplies in it. We don’t touch it. It’s reserved for the situation where we can’t get to a store and don’t have water.

Ethical Dilemma rising?
This last one, however, raises an interesting point, kind of along the old parable of the Ant and the Grasshopper. If I’ve spent time and energy preparing for a disaster (it’s a matter of When, not if) and it does occur…what’s my obligation to others?
If there’s no running water and no food in grocery stores and you and your family are going hungry, what happens? If I give you food, I risk the lives of my loved ones (am I risking them even by posting this note so that people know I have this supply?) If I don’t give you food, your life may be in jeopardy….then you have a Katrina-like situation, possibly.

Recommendation
Hopefully, everyone will be pro-active enough and prepare for this situation (may it never come)