As everyone is probably aware, I was awakened last Saturday morning at 3am by our alarm monitoring company telling me our fire alarm at the office had gone off. On my way to the office I imagined everything from a false alarm to the smoldering ashes of a total loss. Not a good feeling. I arrived to find 4 fire trucks and a bunch of firefighters running around our office building. The bad feeling got worse. After speaking to one of the firemen, I found out that the office directly behind ours was where the fire occurred. The fire was out but the office was destroyed.
Due to our newly installed alarm system (installed in December) and the great response from the Torrington Fire Department, our office was spared any fire damage although we are still fighting the smoke smell.
Even though we were spared any real damage, this episode caused me to kick in various pieces of our disaster plan. The process highlighted several issues that I thought I would share.
First, it's the little things that will get you. Of course we have various business insurances. But the contact info is (or was) in the office. In this case, once I was able to get into the office I could locate the info. I have now created a Microsoft OneNote notebook and store a synced copy of it in the "Cloud" on a SkyDrive account. This notebook is our complete disaster plan. Everything from contact info to specific procedures is in this notebook. Of course it is a constant work in process, but by having it synced to the "Cloud", I have access to it from any computer that has Internet access. This includes my home computer, my various tablets (don't ask - of course I need 3 tablets) and even my cell phone. The fact that the notebook is synced on several of these devices means I have access to the most recent version of the plan even if I don't have Internet access.
Next, disasters come in many forms. Our office was spared in this case. However, I did not have access until the Fire Marshall said I could go in. If the fire was of suspecious origin, which might have required ongoing investigation, I might not have had access to our office for an extended period of time, a disaster in itself. By having a list of our critical functions I am able to determine which of those functions have to be put in disaster mode. For instance, our service ticketing software is hosted. So, other then letting everyone know that they need to access it from home, I would not have to worry about this critical function.
So our little "disaster" turned out to be just that, little. But, I am more confident about our ability to react to a more serious disaster from the lessons learned. What else is in our Disaster Plan Notebook? You'll have to keep your eyes here on our blog. I will post more information soon.
