Yours Truly Featured In Quote On National Best Seller

About a year ago I was asked to review the book Handbook To Practical Disaster Preparedness For The Family.

Since then, the book has become a national best seller and the new expanded and updated second edition has come out. I am also proud to be featured in a quote on the front cover of the book after reviewing the first edition.

Below is an image of the front cover. This book truly is a must read.

Disaster Preparedness Blog Now Available On Kindle

Love to read Disaster Preparedness Blog? Now you can take it with you and have it at your fingertips as well as obtain recent posts automatically through the kindle or kindle app on your pc or smart phone.

Disaster Preparedness Blog Kindle Edition

Wine Owner Suffers $1 Million Loss After Accident

In the last few years there have been a number of mishaps involving wine and wineries resulting in losses impacting their businesses. The latest of these events involves the estimated loss of more than $1 million worth of 2010 Mollydooker Velvet Glove Shiraz.

Sparky Marquis, the owner of Mollydooker wines was planning to ship the wines to the United States to formally launch the wine for the first time. With only one case of the 462 cases surviving the fall, the launch will now have to wait. The wine was valued at 185 Australian dollars per bottle ($200 U.S.).

As I mentioned earlier, this is not the only mishap to occur in the wine industry in the last few years.

Consider what you would do if the following occurred at your winery:

• Contamination from cleaning solvents used in the bottling process ruins $60,000 worth of wine.
• An employee doesn’t turn off a tank valve, and you lose 20,000 gallons of wine due to leakage.
• An employee accidently drives a forklift into a wine tank, causing the tank to collapse and the wine to spill out, potentially resulting in $100,000 in damages.

Several years ago a massive fire broke out at a wine storage facility causing $2,000,000 in losses and wiping out entire inventories of wine.  

Coupling my love of wine with business continuity planning I wanted to us this post to show that nearly any business can benefit from proper contingency planning. Why? With proper planning many of these mishaps do not have to result in the complete loss of inventories, income, or even result in complete business disruptions.  

I'll be doing an upcoming post on what you can do to implement a business continuity plan at no cost.

Terrorists Seeking Ways to Surgically Implant Explosives into Fliers on International Flights

According to an NBC newswire federal authorities have notified airlines overseas that have flights coming into the United States that terrorists are seeking to create “human bombs” by surgically implanting them inside of a potential suicide bomber.

There is no current indication of an actual threat at this time, but groups are seeking to find ways of carrying out this type of attack. It is important to note here that if they can employ such a device the airlines will not be the only targets and it becomes increasingly difficult to tell if someone is carrying a device in a crowd.

People will have to increasingly rely on things that look out of place and the level of anxiety among other things to locate potential attackers.

Understanding a Disaster Declaration

Too many people, including business owners and even local officials do not fully understand how the process of disaster declarations work. Before the President can make a disaster declaration and commit funds and resources to a disaster the Governor of a State must first make a declaration.

Here is a little bit more on how this process works brought to you by ABC KCAU-TV:

A disaster declaration request can be made by the governor of a state through the regional Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) office to the president of the United States.

 To request a disaster declaration, state and federal officials conduct joint preliminary damage assessments (PDAs) to estimate the extent of the disaster and its impact on individuals and public facilities. This information is then included in the governor's request to show that state and local government can't effectively respond and that federal assistance is necessary.

 If a disaster declaration is declared by the president, federal programs will be activated to assist in disaster response and recovery efforts. The disaster declaration can include means for either public or individual assistance or both.

 Public Assistance: Through the Public Assistance (PA) Grant Program, FEMA provides supplemental federal disaster grant assistance for debris removal, emergency protective measures, and the repair, replacement, or restoration of disaster-damaged, publicly owned facilities and the facilities of certain Private Non-Profit (PNP) organizations. The PA Program can also provide help to lessen potential damages from future events.

 Individual Assistance: Homeowners, renters & businesses owners may be eligible to receive assistance for property that has been damaged or destroyed and whose loss is not covered by insurance. The assistance is not intended to restore damaged property to its condition before the disaster.

 Additional information on rebuilding and recovering from a disaster can be found on the FEMA website at http://www.fema.gov/index.shtm

 The state of Nebraska is currently in the PDA collection and assessment process. Once the process is completed a determination will be made on whether the state has met the damage threshold necessary to request a Disaster Declaration.