The CareerXroads Annex: Disaster Planning | ERE Blog Network

The CareerXroads Annex: Disaster Planning | ERE Blog Network: "
Thursday, March 09, 2006
Disaster Planning
posted by
Gerry Crispin (121)




This week marked 6 months since one of our country's major disasters.

In a related story, a small notice buried in today's Wall Street Journal lamented that the growth of travel bookings for Europe may have been slowed slightly by the arrival of avian flu. We should be so lucky that this is the only article we'll see on the subject in the next year. But I no longer believe we should bank on luck.
Katrina and Avian flu are related. One was real and continues. The other is one of many potential disasters we can imagine. there are likely others we can't.

Disasters are no longer a plan we need to prepare for and then forget. It is getting more likely we will execute the plan.

Consider these opening scenes of a sci-fi movie I once saw as a child:

Scene 1. Scientists dressed in full contamination gear busily bag the carcasses of a flock of dead swans. A muted conversation ensues about reports of similar events around the country that began with the 2006 Spring bird migration - and the concern about the possibility that a complete subgroup of birds might dieoff. Loud speculation then commences from a young hippie type with a newly minted PhD claiming that swans are more sensitive than other birds to emerging diseases. His canary in the mine rantings are interrupted by a large guffaw and subsequently put down as the preposterous ravings of chicken little by a pompous offical with white hair at the temples, a bad tie and an even bigger PhD.

Scene 2. Small child plays in yard outside a rural West Virginia c"