The levels of critical blood types dropped to dangerously low levels.”Įntergy-one of the largest energy providers in the area-also suffered the wrath of Katrina. The storm closed several locations, and as a result, kept blood donors from being able to give blood at a time of substantial demand increase. “We did not have a disaster recovery plan in place when Katrina struck our office in Shreveport Louisiana and several other regional centers 10 years ago. Ric Jones warned that lack of planning by his organization could have potentially cost lives. It’s almost a certainty that your business will face a major disaster event at some point and you need to have a clear plan in place that defines how to respond and maintain as much normalcy in business operations as is possible. Due to this, we have the mirror copy of our Shreveport-based data systems replicated in Sungard AS’ northeast data center,” said Ric Jones. “If the Shreveport center is down one or two days, it can’t collect the data it needs to provide blood on demand. LifeShare works with Sungard Availability Services to provide disaster recovery and cloud-based resiliency. LifeShare Blood Centers also figured out that redundancy is essential for business continuity. “When Hurricane Katrina’s devastation struck New Orleans, several of our regional centers were closed, demand for blood product substantially increased and donors were not able to give blood due to our site closures, interrupting the flow of business.” Ric Jones, CIO of LifeShare Blood Centers, faced a similar tragedy. “When Hurricane Katrina’s devastation struck New Orleans, one of our offices in the city was under water and couldn’t reopen for several months,” explained Kate Campion, president of CPR (Cooperative Processing Resources). It can be summed up in the phrase “Don’t leave all of your eggs in one basket,” with the added caveat, “If you do leave your eggs in one basket, at least put that basket in the cloud where it’s safe from natural disasters.” However, many businesses did learn the hard way that there are things that can and should be done to increase resiliency and facilitate business continuity during a major catastrophe.įor those businesses that aren’t dependent on a specific location or purely on local customers, for example, the biggest lesson from Hurricane Katrina is the same as the lesson businesses in New York learned from the terrorist attack on 9/11. Companies that are dependent on physical location or rely exclusively on revenue from local customers will always by heavily impacted by an event like Katrina. Some of those businesses failed as a result of lost revenue resulting from nearly half a million people displaced from the region, but many of those businesses failed as a direct result of the destruction and impact the storm had on their ability to continue operating.įor some of the smallest businesses there really is no solution-no way to guard against a catastrophe like Katrina or prepare to handle the next major disaster. Thankfully, we have learned a lot of hard lessons in the wake of Hurricane Katrina that businesses can use to be better-prepared for the next major disaster.Īn article from USA Today in 2007-two years after Hurricane Katrina-estimates that 7,900 businesses in New Orleans and southeast Louisiana went out of existence as a result of Katrina. The destruction from the hurricane itself, and the subsequent flooding that put most of New Orleans underwater knocked many businesses out of commission-and more than a few completely out of existence. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration claims Hurricane Katrina was the most destructive storm to ever strike the United States. A decade ago New Orleans and the Gulf Coast of the United States were devastated by the sixth strongest Atlantic hurricane ever recorded.
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