Plane Crash in Palo Alto Causes Many Businesses and Community to Activate Disaster Plans

As I often say, business disruptions come in many forms, not just from earthquakes, tornadoes and hurricanes.

This point made clear again from the events yesterday morning when a small plane struck a tower that was a single point of failure which carried electricity to the Palo Alto power grid.

The loss of power disrupted roughly 28,000 customers which included, 240 startups and high tech companies such as Facebook headquarters (the Facebook site was unaffected), VMware, and HP. At least Two medical facilities were on back-up generators and had to cancel elective surgeries and re-route emergency patients to other area hospitals.

At least two cell towers were not working, and some land-line services were disrupted, and the areas banks had to activate their contingency plans.

Authorities were asking people not to call 911 regarding the outage, and to reduce water usage.

You can see more on the City of Palo Alto site.

Tesla Motors suffered the worst loss. The three people who died in the plane were employees of the company, and my thoughts and prayers go out to them, their business, and family members who are affected by the loss.

If any good might come from such a tragedy I hope that it makes people aware how vulnerable we are to events such as this, both in our personal lives and from the point of view of business.

AP News Video

Plane Crashes Into Office Complex in Austin, Texas

A plane crashed into an office complex that housed FBI and IRS offices. An FBI spokesperson has stated that their office was not hit.

The incident is believed to be intentional and the pilot may have set his own home on fire before heading to the airport and taking off in the plane.

The building is seven stories and completely engulfed in flames, power was shut down in the area for safety reasons.

Unknown number of injuries at this time.

Local News Coverage below from KXAN

Biden Says Large Scale 9/11 Like Attack in the U.S. "Unlikely"

Vice President Biden says large scale terror attack against the United States unlikely while on CNN's Larry King Live.

recently I wrote a two part series on why I think the current administrations does not get the current situation when it comes to the Islamic terrorist threat you can view Part I here.

Additionally the day after the State of the Union Address the President gave a statement about traveling on trains since he is now backing future creation of a high-speed rail systems in the U.S. In that statement he said "besides, you don't have to take off your shoes" alluding to the fact that unlike traveling by planes we do not have to remove our shoes while traveling on trains.

There are several things wrong with this statement, the most important of which again shows the lack of understanding of the threat we face. Though it is true you do not have to remove your shoes while traveling by train, it is not impossible for a terror attack to occur on a train inside the U.S.

I would like to see more security on our trains, and at all major transprotation hubs that includes rail, bus, plane and ships.

Quite frankly these two statements scare me.

Disaster Tip of the Week: Keep Important Documents In Ziplock Bags

Most of us have many important documents such as insurance papers, wills, licenses, deeds, mortgage, automobile titles, birth certificates, passports, marriage/divorce papers, citizenship papers, contracts, etc. but if your like most people you keep these items in a draw or even in multiple places without much other protection.

Granted a number of people will keep them in a fire safe box, but most people don't. Also, many fire safe boxes and safes are not waterproof.

I personally put all my important documents both personal and business related into ziplock bags, and for documents that are hard to replace I double bag them and place the closures at opposite ends. Some might say this is a bit overkill, but if you have ever seen some of the things I have it is not without good reason.

Placing them into the ziplock bags will keep them from being damaged by water and other debris, during a disaster. Also, water damage is more likely than a fire. This is good for other items that may be valuable.

I would highly recommend if you are placing copies of your documents into safe deposit boxes to place them into ziplock bags as well, which brings me to a story.

I had a friend who placed some very valuable paper items into a safe deposit box that were destroyed when someone broke into the bank and used a water pick to open the safe deposit boxes. All of his stuff as well as other peoples papers were destroyed.

One more important thing to note is that I place the bagged documents into a fire safe box and then have it in a location ready to grab if I have to leave during a fire.

Of course you can purchase specially designed acid free document holders which is the best option, but the plastic bags are a good alternative for protecting them short term, and they are cheap.

One thing you don't want to do however is to laminate your important legal documents. Yes, you can keep them from being damaged from spills and debris, but the lamination process itself causes damage and speeds up the process of the document breaking down.

Chatter by Terrorists Increasing On Internet with Intent to Bypass Airport Security Measures

According to an exclusive CBS News report chatter among terrorists has increased recently and they are actively looking to bypass security on international flights.

Watch CBS News Videos Online