Does your emergency preparedness checklist include your business? What if you faced evacuation from your home, or your community where your business is located?

As of Tuesday, May 3, 2016, the largest fire evacuation in Alberta, Canada history is taking place with wildfires engulfing the city of Fort McMurray and surrounding areas. All neighborhoods, 70,000 are being evacuated as of earlier this evening.

Many will be displaced from this situation.

All are facing emergency plans in action and recovery uncertainty.

My heart goes out to the people in this community. My hope goes out to families and individuals in this community to be safe and recovery to be expedient.

Do we have WA members affected by this?

Disaster Recovery

Many throughout the world have recently faced disaster recovery in other emergency-type situations. As Wealthy Affiliate continues to gain members from all over the world, the world becomes a smaller place. One community really touches another at a rather quick pace.

Do we know WA members who have recently faced other emergency-type situations?

Among the many concerns one has in emergencies is not just lives, homes, and safety. Additional concern can be summed up with a two short but meaningful questions:

• Do you have an emergency plan in place?
• Have you considered having an emergency plan in place that includes your business?

As an independent business owner, our business continuity should be included as part of our preparedness. Even if we are just starting up. Why?

Our ability to recover from financial loss from business interruption affects our livelihood. The faster we recover our business activity, the faster everything else can recover.

Emergency Preparedness Checklist

Many situations, including evacuation type situations can be a little less devastating and overwhelming with emergency preparedness and an emergency preparedness checklist.

Your family and your home should definitely be of utmost consideration. Yet, your checklist should include deliberate analysis that helps you supplies answers to the following questions that pertain to your business:

1. What is at risk in your small business? In other words, where are your business vulnerabilities?
2. What are your physical risks (equipment, inventory, or product supply)?
3. What are your budgetary vulnerabilities (budget compared to monthly expenses)?
4. Can you estimate your shutdown costs and revenue loss?
5. Do you know the estimated cost of recovery?
6. What do you have in place to lessen the social impact (your unavailable online presence)?
7. Do you have a data recovery plan (website and business data backed up on a regular basis)?
8. Do you have alternate supply sources or an alternate temporary location of operation?

As you uncover and define the risks particular to your business, you can begin to see the value in preparedness and having a recovery plan in place. This will help you to prioritize with much less indecision. It will help you to define a business continuity plan that will protect the investment you have made in your business.

Recovery Resources

You will also, through your discovery, find complimentary physical and financial recovery resources that are available for small businesses. These resources may help to reduce both the impact of the emergency event and lessen overall financial damages from disruption of your normal business routine.

More importantly, you will return more quickly to an ‘as-normal’ business operation.

Regardless if your business is just an active website or one that distributes a product, success demands an in-place plan.

So, does your emergency preparedness checklist include your business?