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Home / Washington Business - March/April 2007 / Chair's Corner: Winter storms remind us to be prepared |
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Chair's Corner: Winter storms remind us to be prepared |
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Written On: March/April 2007 |
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Written By: by Kirk Nelson, Chair, Board of Directors. |
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I have previously talked about the unprecedented convergence of technology that has completely changed how we work, how we go about our personal relationships, and how we play.
We have come to expect that we can reach our children on their cell phones if there’s an emergency, or that many of our employees can work from home if need be. Yet, amidst all this innovation, we can be humbled as Mother Nature reminds us that she can very quickly impact what we have come to expect.
Washington’s recent winter storms have underscored the importance of emergency preparedness and having a plan for your family and your business. According to the King County Office of Emergency Management, nearly 40 percent of all small businesses that close for more than three days will not reopen.
Making sure employees also have a disaster preparedness plan for their families is critical to the recovery of a business. Of all business resources, employees are the most important asset. During and after a disaster, an employee’s family will be their primary concern, so it’s important to encourage all your employees to have individual family plans.
The December storm also pointed out how dependent we are on a reliable telecommunications infrastructure. During the extended power outages, cell phones couldn’t be recharged and cordless home phones lasted only a short time. It became apparent that, in spite of advancing technology, a landline and a corded phone that plugs into the wall is still the best bet when the power goes out. Unlike other newer technologies, a corded phone uses its own power source which runs through the phone line and does not rely on the standard electrical grid.
To keep people connected and basic systems operating during the two weeks of power disruption that impacted hundreds of thousands of Washington residents, thousands of Qwest employees worked 24/7 to make sure backup systems were working. For example, a mud slide on Mount Rainier wiped out several telephone poles, isolating Crystal Mountain and Greenwater from 911 service. More than eight feet of water covering the only road to the area prevented vehicle access. Instead of waiting for waters to recede, Qwest crews threw a fiber-optic line over their shoulders and hiked through the woods, pulling almost a mile of cable by hand. They restored 911 service within 12 hours.
Puget Sound Energy had more than 420 crews, —more than 2,000 workers—involved in the restoration effort. Besides local crews, PSE enlisted nearly 170 additional crews from across the western United States and Canada. They worked tirelessly to repair the core backbone of their system—the high-voltage transmission grid—to restore power to customers who lost service.
Qwest also made free corded phones available to the public who needed them for emergencies during the storm. The response was overwhelming, and in an effort to continue to raise safety awareness, Qwest is donating 1,000 corded phones to the state of Washington. These phones will be given to fire chiefs, police chiefs and heads of the 65 emergency management divisions in the state as part of an increased preparedness effort and to help ensure these people can be reached at home whenever the power goes down.
Both Lt. Gov. Brad Owen and Maj. Gen. Timothy Lowenberg have stressed that every family—and especially first responders—should have corded phones in their emergency kits. As Lowenberg said in a recent announcement, "A solid communication infrastructure enables us to quickly respond to emergencies. We must always continue to raise the bar in preparedness, and public-private partnerships like the one between the Department of Emergency Management and Qwest is an example of what can be accomplished on behalf of the public good."
While the storms raged on, countless stories emerged of acts of kindness, compassion and humanity. Neighbors took care of each other, strangers became friends and calls for help were answered. While many Washingtonians were eating dinner by the fireside or in the home of a neighbor, thousands of men and women in Washington were working around the clock in the storm to make sure the basic communications infrastructure wasn’t compromised and that our power systems were restored.
These storms reminded us not only of the importance of disaster preparedness, but also of the value of our network of friends, family and neighbors that keeps us all connected in an emergency.
For more information on emergency preparedness, visit www.govlink.org/3days3ways and www.ready.gov.
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