While every portion of the Emergency Management continuum is important, Mitigation is one of those components that has a huge impact and is easy to incorporate other sections such as planning, preparedness, prevention and much more. Which is true for most all the continuum and EM in general, remember, it’s all about collaboration. When Mitigation is done right it is the part of the continuum that can save the most lives by perhaps preventing the incident or disaster in the first place.
As we said in our last blog, Mitigation is defined as “any action or activity that is designed to reduce or eliminate the probability of a disaster all together, or a long-term solution designed to reduce the vulnerability of a population, community or piece of critical infrastructure.” This is all to say that Mitigation is really all about focusing on reducing the cause, impact, and consequences of disasters.
So, let’s consider some mitigation efforts we could take to help protect a local retail business. Typically, this would require a group brainstorming session where each individual risk or hazard is considered. Here we will cover general mitigation, fire, and flooding. The actions that we take should not only help to protect the financial interests of the company but also to help protect the people, both employees and customers alike.
Alarms and Alerts:
Alarm/alert/surveillance systems are a great and often mandatory general mitigation option that helps to protect inventory, infrastructure. When we talk about a surveillance system, we are talking about systems that integrate Fire and Flood protection as well as providing video surveillance and other monitoring options. There is an added bonus if the system has the option to alert multiple specified people as well as to automatically call first responders. Additionally, keep in mind that these systems have evolved to the point where they can do all the above and can be run by a single owner, or you can pay the subscription fees to have a company monitor the property for you.
This approach accomplishes several goals:
- Provides security through video surveillance which is known to deter criminal activity.
- Video surveillance provides evidence that helps to protect the company in the event of a personal injury claim or suit as well as by providing evidence to insurers in the event of an incident or disaster.
- Fire, Flood and Glass Break sensors provides advanced warning and notification capabilities to elicit a faster response to decrease damage to property.
Business Continuity
In the event of a major flood, how will your businesses technology systems fare? Does your business have physical data servers? POS systems? Patient or sales records? If you are using cloud-based systems, what happens if those host locations are damaged or destroyed? This was a costly lesson learned in 2017 when hurricane Harvey hit Texas causing massive flooding, as well as more recently for a major video game developer who lost all of their program data as well as 8 years of player data, due to a fire that occurred in the building that their servers were held in. If you are not using a cloud-based system you may be at risk if your physical location suffers a disaster. A best practice that I often recommend would be to utilize a minimum of two server locations and a minimum of backing up saved data daily. Additionally, those locations should be in two separate, low-risk locations.
Insurance
Insurance is the most common mitigation practice that nearly everyone has. When we talk about insurance as a mitigation technique, we are typically referring to how insurance mitigates the effects of an incident and help the effected party recover more quickly. However, insurance programs can and often do have requirements that must be met to qualify for the coverage. For example, the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) is a federal program and is available to anyone living in one of the 23,00 participating NFIP communities. The NFIP sets mandates for coverage and works with communities required to adopt and enforce floodplain management regulations that help mitigate flooding effects. Just one inch of water can cause up to $25,000 in damage, often more for businesses, especially if product and materials are not kept off ground level. These damages are not covered under conventional insurance and require special flood insurance riders to be covered.
This article barely touches on the different considerations that must be made for the Mitigation of incidents and disasters. If this article made you think about your personal or company’s Mitigation practices or capabilities, ask us about our Continuity of Operations Planning tool to help mitigate against loss due to incident or disaster for businesses. You can also reach out for a free consultation to discuss best practices for personal property Mitigation at www.emp2c.com/consulting
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