Disaster Recovery Journal- Volume 19, Issue 3 - Summer 2006 Issue

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Summer 2006 Issue

DISASTER RECOVERY
JOURNAL

P. O. Box 510110
St. Louis, MO 63151
(314) 894-0276
Fax: (314) 894-7474
Internet www.drj.com
E-mail drj@drj.com

PUBLISHER
Richard L. Arnold, CBCP
richard@drj.com

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Jon Seals
jon@drj.com

SENIOR EDITOR
Janette Ballman
janette@drj.com

COPY EDITORS
Richard Sandhofer
richards@drj.com
Pamela Clifton
pamelaclifton@hotmail.com

ADVERTISING
Robert Arnold
bob@drj.com

_____________

Corporate

President/CEO
Richard L. Arnold, CBCP
richard@drj.com

Vice President
Robert Arnold
bob@drj.com

CONFERENCE COORDINATOR
Patti Fitzgerald, CBCP
patti@drj.com

CONFERENCE REGISTRAR
Merce Knese
mercedes@drj.com

CIRCULATION
Laura Baugh
laurab@drj.com

EXECUTIVE COUNCIL
Jeff Dato, MBCP, KPMG
John Jackson, J Albright Advisors
Edward Devlin, E.S. Devlin & Associates
James Hammill, CBCP, JMH Consulting
Pat McAnally, SunGard Availability
Brian Turley, Strohl Systems
Belinda Wilson, Hewlett-Packard

INTERNATIONAL
CONTACTS
England: Thom Hetherington
Business Continuity
Phone: 0161-237-1007
thomh@tempus.demon.co.uk

Australia: Anthony J. Harvey
Journal of Business Continuity
Phone: 0011-613-953-0055-8
fax: 0011-613-953-0528
sector@notability.com.au

Japan: Shinji Hosotsubo
Quake Japan Co., Ltd.
Phone: 03-3215-2880
fax: 03-3215-2881

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Protecting Confidential Information The Right Way

By Edward S. Devlin, CBCP

During the DRJ conference in Orlando (March 2006), I was asked for my opinion a number of times on the response of various government officials following Hurricane Katrina. I responded by saying that while all the “facts” are not in yet, the mayor of New Orleans, the governor of Louisiana, and the heads of FEMA and Homeland Security appeared to have performed pitifully. I added that as more “facts” become known, we’ll be in a better position to evaluate the reasons for the disgraceful performance of our leaders.
I emphasized word “facts” because I know this has become a political issue, and as such much of the available information is laced with a bias of one kind or another. For the BC professionals to evaluate the “whys” and the “whos,” we need “facts” not opinions.
After returning from the conference, I started to research “Katrina” articles that I clipped out of newspapers and magazines. As I began researching for information on the “lessons learned” from “Hurricane Katrina,” I came across an article I thought I should share with you.

“It was a broiling August afternoon in New Orleans, La., the Big Easy, the City That Care Forgot. Those who ventured outside moved as if they were swimming in tupelo honey. Those inside paid silent homage to the man who invented air-conditioning as they watched TV “storm teams” warn of a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. Nothing surprising there: Hurricanes in August are as much a part of life in this town as hangovers on Ash Wednesday.
“But the next day the storm gathered steam and drew a bead on the city. As the whirling maelstrom approached the coast, more than a million people evacuated to higher ground. Some 200,000 remained, however – the car-less, the homeless, the aged and infirmed, and those die-hard New Orleanians who look for any excuse to throw a party.
“The storm hit Breton Sound with the fury of a nuclear warhead, pushing a deadly storm surge into Lake Pontchartrain. The water crept to the top of the massive berm that holds back the lake and then spilled over. Nearly 80 percent of New Orleans lies below sea level – more than eight feet below in places – so the water poured in. A liquid brown wall washed over the brick ranch homes of Gentilly, over the clapboard houses of the Ninth Ward, over the white-columned porches of the Garden District, until it raced through the bars and strip joints on Bourbon Street like the pale rider of the Apocalypse. As it reached 25 feet over parts of the city, people climbed onto roofs to escape it.
“Thousands drowned in the murky brew that was soon contaminated by sewage and industrial waste. Thousands more who survived the flood later perished from dehydration and disease as they waited to be rescued. It took two months to pump the city dry, and by then the Big Easy was buried under a blanket of putrid sediment, a million people were homeless, and 50,000 were dead. It was the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States. When did this calamity happen? It hasn’t – yet.”

Yes, it has. The article could have been a screenplay written for a disaster movie. But it wasn’t a screenplay. It was a very accurate description of what could happen someday in the future. Only the future was – August 2005. The disaster was Hurricane Katrina.
This is an excerpt of an article that was published in the National Geographic magazine in October 2004. The article was titled, “Gone With The Water.”
After reading it the first time, I reread it to make sure this was a “scenario” prepared before “Katrina” struck. The next paragraph in the article reinforced my disappointment in our government officials.

“But the doomsday scenario is not far-fetched. The Federal Emergency Management Agency lists a hurricane strike on New Orleans as one of the most dire threats to the nation, up there with a large earthquake in California or a terrorist attack on New York City. Even the Red Cross no longer opens hurricane shelters in the city, claiming the risk to its workers is too great.”

Did FEMA consider this scenario seriously as written in the article? If it did think it was one of the most dire threats to the nation, then there’s definitely something wrong with the leaders of FEMA and Homeland Security. The article went on to describe the concerns of a retired coastal engineer:

“The killer for Louisiana is a Category 3 storm at 72 hours before landfall that becomes a Category 4 at 48 hours and a Category 5 at 24 hours – coming from the worst direction,” says Joe Suhayda, a retired coastal engineer at Louisiana State University who has spent 30 years studying the coast. Suhayda is sitting in a lakefront restaurant on an August afternoon sipping lemonade and talking about the chinks in the city’s hurricane armor. “I don’t think people realize how precarious we are,” Suhayda says, watching sailboats glide by. “Our technology is great when it works. But when it fails, it’s going to make things much worse.”

Needless to say, I was shocked at how its descriptions closely matched the experiences from Katrina. It made me even more disappointed and angry at the leaders of the city, the state and our country.
I am going to continue my research by acquiring the book written by Douglas Brinkley titled “The Great Deluge.” I’ve heard Brinkley discuss his findings on the radio and TV recently. In it, he comments on the role of the mayor, the governor, FEMA, Homeland Security and the White House. It should be very interesting reading.
Final thought of this author. James Lee Witt, where are you when we need you?

Ed Devlin, CBCP, has provided business recovery planning consulting services since 1973 when he co-founded Devlin Associates. Since then, Devlin has assisted more than 300 companies in the writing of their business recovery plans and has made more than 800 seminars and presentations worldwide.