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You Against the Storm Campaign 2010 - This Year Could Be The Year Rodney has been racked by storms before. Of all the natural disasters it’s the most common, the most likely and, as we all experienced in 2007, the most devastating.
Now is the time to prepare your household or business for the next one. It’s easier than you may think. A few simple measures taken now by you, your family or your staff will protect you from the worst and hasten the recovery after a storm. That’s why we are featuring those measures on the following pages - a combined project of Rodney Civil Defence Emergency Management and Rodney Times. They are aimed at the storm, and they are aimed at making sure Rodney, its families, its towns and its business can meet and beat anything that a storm can throw at us in 2010. Storms Mean Business Too
It’s not only households that need to prepare for a storm; businesses need to as well, as Alice Dominikovich-Murray explains. “You Against the Storm” is the Civil Defence campaign raising awareness of the need to plan for a storm event.
For most of us this usually relates to household strategies.
But what about businesses? It’s not just families against the storm; businesses are affected too. So what can they do to secure their survival during an emergency event?
Part of this year’s “You Against the Storm” campaign is to help make businesses resilient in emergency situations. Organisational resilience is often neglected as “too difficult”, “too costly” or “unnecessary”. So will taking the time to enforce a resilience strategy be worth the time, money and effort put into producing one?
Yes.
Adopting a business resilience strategy helps businesses stay operational during emergencies, or at least aid in the reopening of a business as soon as possible after an event. It helps secure economic continuity of a company and, in turn, economic continuity of the community. A strong functioning business sector aids in the rebuilding or stabilising of society, particularly when that society is recovering after any disaster - for Rodney most commonly a storm.
Business resilience planning consists of adopting a simple strategy to meet the safety needs of a business and its employees, to resolve a best possible outcome and survival of a business during an emergency. It gives a business advantage as the company has the skills to deal with the situation and has the expertise to react successfully. Identifying potential risks that an unplanned emergency would have on businesses or employees helps them to implement hypothetical plans of action to form appropriate reactions. Then, when disaster strikes, businesses can evaluate strategies to form suitable responses, adopting and adapting them to the situation.
Business resilience isn’t an insurance policy against disaster of course; but it does determine how successful business survival will be before, during, and after times of crisis. It will also be recognised by insurance companies. Insurance companies will often act favourably if they are aware of the strategy. It shows that a business was prepared and acted appropriately, so any damages were truly accidental and unpreventable.
So preparing a business resilience strategy for a business during a storm event and its aftermath is worth doing, and worth doing well.
Alice Dominikovich-Murray is a first-year communications student at AUT. The Four Cornerstones of a Business Resilience Strategy Identify - Any potential risks or hazards that an emergency situation will have on your business Implement - Put in place appropriate courses of action to counteract the potential risks Evaluate - Evaluate the situation and the risks, then act accordingly Adopt/Adapt - Adopt the necessary course of action, and adapt it to the situation
You Against the Storm Campaign 2009 In 2009 Rodney District Council Civil Defence ran a competition for all Rodney school children to draw, paint or tell us about their experiences in a storm. Some of the entries were published in a book which is now available online.
This book contains their suggestions, their memories, their stories. When it comes to kids against the storm, as this anthology records, the kids clearly are on to it! Civil Defence is indebted to all the young contributors.
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