As a business owner, you have many tasks on your schedule and preparing for natural disasters might not be that high on the list. While you might not have availability for natural disaster preparedness training, there are many ways to equip your business and team for various disasters. Outsourcing environmental disaster training services is one of those solutions.
But before you learn how to benefit from these training services, you must understand the environmental calamities in your region and how they can impact your business.
What Are Common Natural Disasters That Affect Businesses?
Common natural disasters that affect businesses include wildfires, hurricanes, tornadoes, winter storms, landslides and winter storms. These natural disasters can be more common in some regions than others. Identifying typical environmental disasters in your area can help you take accurate precautions:
- Wildfires: These are uncontrolled fires on vegetation or land that can spread to buildings and homes, common in the Midwest, West and West Pacific regions.
- Hurricanes: Common in Hawaii and the South and Southeast regions, hurricanes include extensive storms and high winds.
- Tornadoes: Severe air tunnels that extend from the base of thunderstorms to the earth are common in Midwest, South and Southeast regions.
- Landslides: These are significant earth movements that cause rock, sand and debris to fall or slip from a slope. West Pacific or island regions can experience landslides.
- Winter storms: Winter storms include wind that blows snow, causing severe snowfall and chill. New England and Mid-Atlantic regions can often experience these storms.
- Volcanic eruptions: Volcanic eruptions can occur in areas like Hawaii, including gas and molten lava spewing from volcanos onto buildings and land.
- Tsunamis: Tsunamis are large waves spanning into land caused by a volcanic eruption or earthquake under the ocean and can be common in West Pacific or tropical areas.
- Earthquakes: Severe ground movement and shaking can occur in states like Illinois, Missouri and some West Pacific locations.
What Are the Common Impacts of Natural Disasters on Businesses?
The impacts of natural disasters on businesses can include building and infrastructure damage, product supply challenges, loss of clientele and employee injuries and fatalities. With and without proper protocols, natural disasters can have severe consequences for businesses, impacting staff, customers and the company’s future. Here are some common ways natural disasters can affect your business:
Buildings and Infrastructure Damage
Natural disasters can cause billions of dollars of infrastructure damage. As of November 2023, the United States faces over $1 billion in losses from natural disaster events. This amount includes the damage to commercial infrastructure.
Environmental disasters destroy buildings and can affect the functioning of water and energy supplies. They can also harm internal infrastructure like company computers, furniture and electronics. Depending on the severity of these damages, they can cause temporary and permanent business closures, resulting in money and job loss.
Low Stock and Supply Shortages
When natural disasters like hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and earthquakes strike, local roads, highways and other travel passages can become blocked and damaged.
These damages can prevent delivery vehicles from traveling to business and owners from reaching supply locations. These travel limitations prevent you from restocking your shelves, fridges and storerooms, leading to low stock and supply shortages. Severe product shortages can impact your community and business profits, leading to a possible business closure.
Reduced Customer Retention
Areas with high natural disaster rates can be challenging to live in. Constant obstacles like home loss, injury and supply shortages might lead to residents relocating or migrating to other states. Homeowners moving away can affect the region’s economy and your business. If your primary sales avenue is in-store sales, increased migrations can reduce your customer base and impact your income.
Staff Injuries and Tragedies
In the U.S., more than 300 people died from natural disaster events in 2023. One of the most severe impacts of natural disasters is the loss of lives. Businesses must deal with possible staff injuries and fatalities in natural disasters. High injury rates can result in insurance payouts. This cost can overwhelm enterprises, especially in unfavorable circumstances like low profits and economic crises.
How to Prepare Your Business for Natural Disasters
Businesses can prepare for natural disasters by understanding the risks of these events, communicating plans of action and creating business continuity plans to mitigate impacts like infrastructure damage, staff injury and data loss. While natural disasters can be catastrophic, your preparedness for these situations can decide the gravity of the effects on your business. Here are ways to prepare for natural disasters:
Understand the Risks and Challenges
Understanding the risks and challenges is a critical component of natural disaster preparedness. When you know of possible disasters impacting your region and business, you can accurately prepare your company and staff. You can also understand various events’ potential risks and challenges and find ways to minimize or mitigate them.
Develop a Disaster Management Team
Develop and work with a disaster management team to:
- Create evacuation plans.
- Manage and organize company and emergency contact lists.
- Help with the recovery processes.
- Communicate disaster plans and information to employees.
- Lead evacuation processes during emergencies.
- Safeguard company property.
- Test company preparedness for disasters by running evacuation drills.
Communicate Disaster Plans With Staff
Communicate the procedures and protocols involved in natural disasters with staff. Discussing these plans with employees can help them understand the line of action in disaster events and streamline processes. It can also ensure the team knows the risks of disaster events and ways to prevent injury and life-threatening situations.
Backup Company Data
Safeguard your company’s physical and electronic data by backing up information and storing assets in secure alternative locations. Ways to back up and protect information can include:
- Moving electronic information to a cloud-based environment.
- Making copies of documents, paperwork, licenses and files and storing them at different locations.
- Backing up data daily using cloud-based software.
Get a Backup Power Supply
Infrastructure damage, floods, high winds and storms in natural disasters can affect your power supply, leaving your building without electricity for days. One way to address power outages is by investing in a generator or uninterrupted power supply (UPS). These units can kick in during power outages, prevent interruptions and enable safe business shutdowns, including logging off from computers and closing security doors. They can also power your building lights, providing a safer environment when evacuating a natural disaster.
Create a Business Continuity Plan
A recovery plan is an excellent way to identify ways to rebuild and get back to business efficiently after natural disasters. Your business continuity plan can include the following:
- The storage locations of company documents and equipment
- Insurance information
- Checklist for ensuring a facility is safe for entering and working
- Processes for documenting and claiming damages
- An alternative site for resuming operations in instances of building damage.
Review and Update Insurance Policies
Updating your insurance policies is a great way to ensure your business is covered for effects like water, hurricane or earthquake damage. Review your policy with your insurance provider regularly to track changes and update your coverage. This way, you can have peace of mind your business is protected against financial damages.
What to Do If A Natural Disaster Hits Your Business
When a natural disaster hits, preventing further health risks and environmental hazards and following proper clean-up protocols are essential.
Follow Safety Protocols
Natural disasters can happen suddenly, and when they occur, avoiding further health and safety hazards is vital:
- Wildfires: Wear a mask and stay indoors and away from smoke.
- Hazardous chemical spills: Stay clear of and immediately report toxic material spills and waste.
- Infrastructure damage: Avoid debris and wear protective clothing to prevent contact with sharp objects and hazardous chemicals when cleaning up damage.
Reduce Environmental Harm
When cleaning up disaster sites, safely disposing of appliances with refrigerants and cleaning up storage spills is crucial for minimizing environmental harm. Refrigerators and underground chemical storage tankers can filter into drinking water and the soil, and improper disposal is illegal. Follow accurate and safe guidelines for removing hazardous appliances.
Reduce Health Risks
Debris from natural disasters can contaminate water and food sources. Avoid coming into contact or eating and drinking affected water and food, and seek immediate medical attention if you do.
Follow Safe Work Practices for Rebuilding
When rebuilding facilities, buildings can contain hazardous materials like asbestos. Following safe work protocols like wearing protective clothing and masks is essential to clean up and reconstruct impacted buildings safely.
Prepare Your Team for Natural Disasters With Foster Fuels
While natural disasters can cause damage with and without planning, effective preparedness can minimize the impacts of this harm. At Foster Fuels, we understand the importance of natural disaster preparedness. We offer emergency response training to ensure your business and team are ready for these events.
Custom and professional training can give your team the knowledge and tools to manage worst-case scenarios in natural disasters. We tailor our training to meet your business needs and goals so you can appropriately handle environmental disasters in your region.
Contact us today to learn more about our emergency response training services.
