Critical Incident Response

Have you ever been in a situation where there has been a hurricane or even just massive thunderstorms and the power gets knocked out?

In those situations, do you have any heart felt desire to go and travel into a danger zone and check on the status of your business?

What happens if you are out of town at the time? Or, what happens if your business interests are out of state? What if you have businesses in a variety of locations? Can you be in multiple places at once?

One thing is clear. In all cases, you need to know the status of your business(es) so that you can make informed decisions and head off potentially crippling losses. 

The good news is that when a critical incident occurs, you can have a team on the ground very quickly to assess the situation for you and provide you with the information that you need.

For example, you have a restaurant. A hurricane hits. You cannot currently reach your restaurant.  You probably have a variety of questions buzzing through your head.

• Is my restaurant flooded?
• Does my business have electricity?
• Is the alarm system still working?
• Is the food going to last in my refrigerators and freezers?

Our critical incident response team provides the answers to these questions.  In the case of a disaster - a critical incident - we get people on the ground quickly to be able to assess the situation. We secure your property. We determine whether you have power or not. We determine whether your security and fire suppression systems are working or not. We get in contact with you or any other decision-makers - quickly. We provide a firsthand assessment of the situation. And then you can make the decisions that need to be made. Here is an actual example based on recent hurricane activity in the southern United States.

One of our clients actually has several locations for their chain of restaurants.  And, they are spread out over a larger geographical area in the city. For their privacy, we cannot divulge what business that is. That being said, the decision makers for this chain are actually out-of-state. It would not have been practical or even possible for them to fly in and come and assess the state of their businesses within hours of the hurricane.  The airports were closed. So what did they do? They had a plan in place for us to be dispatched in the case of a critical incident. We were on the ground within an hour at their locations. The good news was that the flooding had not breached their buildings. However they had no electricity. They had no fire suppression system. If someone had decided to loot them, there would have been no alarm system to notify the police. In addition, since it was a disaster situation, a break-in would not have been a priority for the police. They probably would not have responded at all.

We arrived on site and assessed the situation. We contacted our client and told them the situation. We then provided security for their locations for 72 hours until the power was able to be restored. More importantly, we were able to arrange for refrigerated units to be brought in to transfer the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of food items that would have spoiled otherwise.

Clearly you can see how huge the losses would have been without having a critical incident response team to expertly respond, provide the needed information, and be on the ground to make certain that our clients decisions were carried out expediently.

You're probably wondering, "I have insurance. Insurance would pay me in the case of a loss. Why do I need something like this?" That's a great question. How long does it take for an insurance claim to get paid out? At the very least, how much time and trouble is it going to take to pick up the pieces from getting looted? How much disruption is there going to be to your business? When was the last time you heard of an insurance company making it an easy fix for you? Are they going to be out there within a few hours and have a check cut for you? After a natural disaster, how many months might pass before you see a check?  You already know the answer to those questions.  An ounce of prevention is worth a ton of cure. In these cases, our clients experienced zero losses. Why? Because these business owners and decision-makers had a critical response team in place to prevent losses that otherwise would absolutely have occurred.

In the case of the critical incident or disaster, you don’t have to wonder whether your interests are protected. You can put a plan into effect so that in the event of a critical incident, you have an expert team on the ground to make an assessment and advise you. Having the right information to make a decision provides you with peace of mind and can help avert tens, hundreds or even millions of dollars in losses that would have occurred otherwise.

We are available by phone 24 hours a day seven days a week as needed. You don’t need to wait until the day of a critical incident. You can contact us now and we can discuss putting a preliminary plan into place. You will be glad you did.