Moving Words – Disaster
Written by Timothy Brady.
“We cannot stop natural disasters but we can arm ourselves with knowledge: so many lives wouldn’t have to be lost if there was enough disaster preparedness.” – Petra Nemcova (Czech model/TV host /philanthropist who founded and chairs the Happy Hearts Fund)
We’ve all seen the recent headlines from Houston, Florida and Puerto Rico where natural disasters have impacted an area from just a few days to weeks to well over a month. We have emergency management departments, fire departments, law enforcement, rescue squads in every county; along with FEMA, the Red Cross and the National Guard. But when a large-scale disaster occurs, you, as a small business, will be on your own for a time. That time may be a few hours or it could be days and weeks before you’ll receive any assistance. Remember in a major disaster it’s very much like triage in the emergency room; it’s not who’s there first, it’s who’s in the greatest danger or has the most serious injury who gets care first. So if you want your company and business to emerge from a catastrophe intact and return to full operations quickly, it’ll depend on how well prepared you are.
The other part of this scenario which is trucking and logistics-specific is the American idiom “When trucking stops, America stops.” So as a trucking company, you and your company may be the vital link to getting areas hard hit by a disaster back to some level of normalcy. Being prepared and ready to provide logistic services becomes even more important.
The first thing to do is make sure your employees are safe and that you have the means to operate on a minimal basis. In order to be prepared, here’s a list of questions for which you should have answers:
- If all communications go down in the area of your trucking company office, can your drivers get funds to fuel and continue operating if they’re outside the disaster region? Check with your fuel card provider to see what programs they have to keep your truckers funded if your main office is suddenly off-line.
- Do you have back-up power; perhaps a generator along with the fuel to operate it? Just a thought: with most trucks having a fuel capacity of 150 gallons of fuel or more, if you have trucks with APUs on them, this may be a quick solution for emergency power to keep a few lights on, a couple of computers operating and cell phones charged.
- Do you have a “bug-out” survival kit in the office for every employee? Each kit should have the following as a minimum: $100 cash, a flashlight with spare batteries,12 bottles of drinking water, a first-aid kit (cold pack, gauze, gauze pads, iodine, hydrogen peroxide, antibacterial cream, adhesive bandages of varying sizes, tweezers, scissors, sewing needles and thread, hemostatic agent like QuikClot®) and sawdust/charcoal hand warmers for the winter. Other items in this kit include at least a week of any prescription medication needed by each employee, plus high-energy snack foods, two changes of clothes, boots, extra socks, jacket or sweatshirt, work gloves, and folding knife or multi-tool like a Leatherman®.
While there are many other things you must do to be prepared for a major disaster, these three will help ensure the safety and well-being of your employees whether OTR or stranded at the office.
“Luck is a very thin wire between survival and disaster, and not many people can keep their balance on it.” – Hunter S. Thompson (American journalist, founder of the gonzo journalism movement. July 18,1937 – February 20, 2005)
