9 Steps Your Business Should Take After a Disaster

In the event of a natural disaster, your business needs to take proper steps to get back up and running. Taking the proper steps for your business can make all the difference. About 40% of small businesses won’t reopen after a disaster – you need to be prepared if you don’t want your business to be among them.

Make Sure Everyone Is Safe

After a natural disaster, your first priority should be making sure that everyone is safe. Communicate this clearly to your employees. If anyone has been seriously injured, request emergency medical assistance at once.

In addition, if your company has a disaster plan, make sure your employees know that they should only perform responsibilities assigned to them if it’s safe to do so.

Contact Emergency Services

Next, contact emergency services. Ideally, you should have a crisis communications plan that designates who’s responsible for this. Otherwise, you’ll have too many people contacting emergency services, which can slow the response. Conversely, you might miss this step altogether if no one steps up to perform this important action.

Stay Off the Property

After a fire is extinguished, a storm passes, or floodwaters recede, it’s tempting to go immediately onto the property to inspect the damage. Resist this temptation and make it clear to employees that they’re supposed to stay off the property until cleared by a qualified inspector to go back inside.

Contact Your Insurance Company

Your insurance company wants to be among the first people to know that your business has experienced a disaster. Failing to contact them in a timely manner can affect your ability to get compensation for your losses.

Besides, your insurance company may be able to offer some immediate assistance, depending on the office’s capabilities and the scope of the disaster.

Contact a Disaster Restoration Company

After your insurance company, you should contact a company that provides commercial restoration services. These are the people who are trained and equipped to deal with properties damaged by fire, storm, flood, or other natural disasters. They know what hazards to watch for and how to assess the scope of damage.

At Burke’s Restoration, we offer 24/7 emergency damage response, so we’ll arrive at your business shortly after you contact us, ready to assess it for safety, loss, and restoration.

Recover Your Possessions and Assess Losses

Once qualified inspectors have cleared the property for you or your employees, you can go inside and start to recover surviving possessions and assess the losses. You may need to enter the property under escort and carefully follow the instructions of your inspector.

The inspector will also be able to give you an idea of what can be restored and what will have to be declared lost. Despite appearances, you may be surprised at just how much a qualified disaster restoration company such as Burke’s can recover from damaged property, and how affordable content restoration can be. In many cases, such as with damaged electronics, restoration may be a fraction of the replacement cost.

Seal the Property

After a disaster, your business property could be dangerous for you, your employees, and your customers. Plus, you want to protect your remaining inventory and fixtures against further damage and/or theft. To do this, you will want to seal off the property from the elements, animals, vandals, and thieves.

Burke’s Restoration offers board-up services to keep your business property safe after a disaster.

Contact Customers, Suppliers, and Vendors

After your disaster restoration company has inspected your business property, they can give you a good sense of how much your business will be affected by the disaster. You’ll know:

• How much of your business property is still usable
• Whether your property’s contents can be restored
• How long restoration will take

At this point, you should reach out to customers, suppliers, and vendors. Customers will want to know whether you’ll be open during restoration and, if not, how long it will take you to reopen. You’ll want to contact suppliers quickly if you need to replenish your inventory. After a large-scale disaster, there may be considerable demand, so the sooner you get your order in, the better. Vendors will want to know if your delivery schedule will be interrupted and, if so, for how long.

Explore Emergency Disaster Assistance

Emergency disaster assistance can be a critical lifeline for you and your business. It can help you bridge the time when you’re not collecting revenue and instead laying out money for commercial restoration services.

If your business was affected by a large-scale disaster, then it’s likely that some form of aid will be available. However, it’s important to understand the nature of the aid you’re receiving. Some aid will come in the form of grants that you receive without obligation other than using it for its designated purpose. Other times, aid will be in the form of loans that you will be expected to repay (though sometimes forgiveness is an option if you meet certain criteria).

Burke’s Restoration Will Help You Prepare for Disaster Before It Happens

Having a plan to respond to a disaster before it happens can make all the difference for your business. If you don’t want to be among the 75% of businesses that fail after a disaster because they didn’t have a disaster plan, you need to take steps today.

At Burke’s Restoration, we have seen firsthand the consequences a disaster can wreak on businesses. We know what makes the difference between those that can navigate the disaster, and those that fold. We’ve helped many businesses put together Ready Action Plans, so they’re prepared to successfully navigate the consequences of any disaster they’re likely to face in the Post Falls or Coeur d’Alene area.

When you take advantage of our Read Action Plan (RAP), our team will:

• Protect your property before, during, and after a disaster
• Improve your reaction time during disasters
• Prepare information about your building in photos and videos
• Document the pre-disaster condition of your business
• Conduct maintenance and preparation activities
• Store your information in a secure cloud location

Let us help you put your plan together now so you’ll be ready when disaster strikes.

Please contact us today for your disaster planning appointment. Burke’s Restoration provides comprehensive commercial restoration services to businesses in Spokane, Coeur d’Alene and the surrounding areas.