Tornados are extreme weather events characterized by funnels of wind that can exceed 100 MPH. They usually travel no more than a few miles before dissipating and are about 250 feet in diameter. They can, however, be much wider and travel much further. Under the right conditions, multiple tornadoes can form in a single given region. The same storm cells that cause tornados can also bring intense hail and/or lightning.
Potential Impact
Tornados are extremely destructive in a relatively narrow swath. They also tend to pass quickly. So while the structure in which a business is located can suffer intense damage — or even complete destruction — broader regional infrastructure for transportation and communications usually remains functional.
Risk Factors
About 1,000 tornadoes form in the U.S. every year — although many of those do so without threatening property or people. The vast majority of tornadoes occur in the Great Plains colloquially known as “Tornado Alley.” However, tornadoes and extreme storms can occur in other parts of the country as well.
Warning Times
The National Weather Service issues tornado watches and warnings. Warnings are issued when a tornado is spotted or indicated by radar and, on average, provides around 15 minutes advance notice of impact.
Technology Continuity
Any business in the path of a tornado will have to prepare for the complete destruction of their technology infrastructure. This means:
- Complete, fully up-to-date off-site backups for data, applications, and server images.
- On-demand availability of failover IT infrastructure in the cloud or at an alternative facility
- On-demand availability of failover voice/fax call switching, such as a hosted PBX service.
As with other disaster, businesses in tornado-prone areas should also be prepared to use their website to continuously update customers about disaster impact and disaster recovery progress.
People Continuity
Businesses operating in areas susceptible to tornadoes should the following steps to ensure the safety of employees and other stakeholders (customers, suppliers) who may be on-premises when a tornado strikes:
- Designate a tornado shelter. The best shelter is usually in an interior room in the lowest possible floor — away from doors, windows, corners, debris, etc. Make sure all employees know where this shelter is.
- Prepare a tornado survival kit that includes food, water, flashlight, extra batteries, etc.
- If pre-tornado weather conditions exist before work or before a shift, have people work from home wherever practical.
- Assign one or two employees to continuously monitor weather alerts for as long as such conditions persist. Do not count on this “just happening.”
- Ensure that all employees and site visitors know exactly where the closest shelter is and what the alert will be.
- Encourage any site visitor who might be planning to leave the site while tornado conditions persist to remain there until the present threat has passed.
- Have a system in place to track both who is in the building and who is in the designated shelter.
Process Continuity
Because tornadoes can have catastrophic impacts on physical facilities, businesses must plan ahead for an alternative way to carry out everyday processes such as answering phones, processing orders, issuing invoices, signing checks, etc. Also, as with other types of disasters, businesses must proactively communicate with stakeholders the potential for a disruption and the steps being taken to avoid that disruption.
Unlike other types of disasters, a tornado can completely devastate businesses and homes on one block while leaving those on another completely unscathed. For this reason, businesses in tornado-prone areas may also want to consider what their planned role will be in helping affected customers, neighboring businesses, and the community in general to recover from a tornado even if they are not directly affected.
Insurance Considerations
Commercial property insurance typically covers any structural damage caused by a tornado. Business interruption insurance, however, is necessary to cover both recovery costs and loss of earnings until operations can resume. Companies should be wary of “anti-concurrent causation” clauses in their existing policies that can give insurers grounds to deny a claim if damage that occurred during a tornado can be attributed to an ancillary cause.
Learn more via Datto’s Natural Disaster Survival Guide.
Contact us today to learn how our Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) can help protect your business.
President / Network Architect
Mark Kolean always had a fascination with technology from the time he was 3 and his gift of the Atari 2600 to current. In 1990 at the age of 14 Mark got his first job in customer support for a mail order business supporting Tandy TSR-80 computer software shipped on cassette tape. A few years later Mark was building hundreds of 286, 386, and 486 computers for the new emerging DOS & Windows 3.1 computers that had exploded on the market.
After a college career studying business and technology Mark Started Shoreline Computer Systems in 1999 at the height of the dot.com boom with the looming crisis of the year2k bug just around the corner. In the early 2000’s a lot of work was done with early network systems including Lantastic, Novell, and Windows NT Server. Mark became a community contributor to the Small Business Specialist community that revolved around Small Business Server 2000-2011 which focused on single or dual server environments for businesses up to 50 in size. Networks during this time frame mostly had a break fix relationship in which work was billed only when a problem occurred.
In the 2010’s Microsoft released their first cloud based software called Microsoft BPOS which would in later become known as Microsoft Office 365. This introduced a new model in technology with pay as you go subscription services. Starting in 2013 Mark’s team at Shoreline Computer System rebranded as Shoreline Technology Solutions to focus on the transition to become proactive and less reactive to data backup and security needs. Starting in 2018 all customers are required to have a backup management plan in place as a center point with the full understanding that if STS isn’t watching the customer’s data, then no one is.
Now in Mark’s 22 years of business he is building a company emphasis of how to help customers retire servers and build networks completely in the cloud.
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