Why is continuity planning important for business?

Business continuity planning is essential and in everyone's best interest because:

• It is the best way to minimize damages and losses of your business property.
• It provides a plan to promote your employees' safety.
• You can prepare your business before a disastrous event occurs.
• You will be less likely to overreact or waste resources in the event of a disaster.
• Appropriately prepared businesses can survive and recover in order to continue supporting local employment, the economy and provide a stable tax base.

While it is not feasible to plan for every conceivable event, you can implement some basic mitigation strategies and advance preparations that provide the most useful and appropriate means of responding with clarity and purpose to a disaster event.

Learn from the lessons of the past!

Take a moment to read each of these stories about a disaster event that really occurred and see if you can identify (1) what advance planning steps might have helped mitigate the significant loss caused by each disaster, or (2) which advance planning steps helped to reduce the impact of each disaster.

Homestead, FL	Dolley Madison	Tampa Oil Spill

1998 Wildfires	Okeechobee Drought