It’s been five years since the Twin Towers fell, the Pentagon was struck and Flight 93 crashed in a Somerset County field. And it’s been a year since Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf, rendering it unrecognizable. Each are slowly falling deeper into our nation’s past, yet it’s still difficult to not still feel a twinge when hearing the date “September 11th,” or wonder when a Category 5 hurricane may barrel through a vulnerable region. And judging from current events, today's environment poses more challenges than ever.

So what can we do? Two things: one, learn from and honor the past; and two, plan for the future in order to prevail over any event that may someday merit an anniversary. In addition to the hurricane information given in the June issue of Recovery Chronicles, here are helpful ideas and observations on planning for terrorism shared by a few of the 30 Strohl clients that were directly affected by the events of September 11:

General BCP Observations

• Keep it simple! Plans that were too detailed were less effective. The minutia of highly detailed recovery plans was often discarded during the recovery process.
• Many key employees did not take copies of their plans home with them and had to rely on the BCP groups to supply them with a copy. One company had superiors sending employees to incorrect recovery locations. Organizations need to have a better awareness of what is realistically possible during a disaster recovery.

Communication/IT Issues

• Knowing the location of your servers and the data stored on them proves to be invaluable. Unfortunately, one company had their main server and back-up server located next to one another in the same room and both were lost.
• Diversify your communications! The 800 number to which a company’s employees were to call for information was also affected by the attack. The company had to reroute their 800 number across the country.
• Most companies used their customer call lists effectively. One company was able to obtain 100 cell phones and had employees calling their client contact lists on cell phones.

Facilities Issues

• Far-reaching effects: due to bomb threats and other security concerns, some organizations had evacuations in other offices that were not directly affected. This phenomena needs to be anticipated and planned for.
• Relocation strategies: For most, the plan was to relocate elsewhere in lower Manhattan. That plan proved impossible and the strategy is being rethought. Most are now looking at new office space outside the area.

BCP Software Issues

• You can never have too many resources. Several companies saw a surge in users of Strohl’s LDRPS software immediately following the 9/11 attacks and subsequently invested in additional concurrent users to ensure bandwidth in the planning process.
• LDRPS was very useful in accounting for personnel. Human Resource departments looked to BCP groups because HR either couldn’t access their data or the data they had was outdated. Finding out which employees were affected was easy to get from LDRPS. Many used the “Employees by Name” report to compile lists of employees in particular locations. Organizations were able to identify the people in the affected buildings and had call lists in hand. HR departments were not able to function without this aid and the BCP groups took on many HR functions.