I was notified by a friend of mine in southern Maryland to a rather precarious situation that I thought was interesting.  The water utility company had to repair a 54” main water line supplying the very populated area of portions of Prince George’s County and was warning more than 100,000 residents and local businesses they would be without water for three to five days during a hot July week.  Needless to say, I bet you can’t find a bottle or jug of water in any store anywhere near there right now.  In thinking about this situation, I see several areas of concern. 

First of all, in the 90 degree heat of July there, dehydration can set in quickly depending on age, size, and activity levels.  The increased strain on emergency services I would imagine would be significant.  Some articles mentioned they planned on handing out emergency water but in these cases there just never is enough.  The health impact of an outage is significant.  When speaking with groups about home or personal preparedness I always emphasize the need for water, and even in my own family preparedness actions I find that having enough water is always a great challenge.  I think it’s a solid assumption that most people in that area do not have any emergency water supply and thus would be reliant on the provided emergency water. 

Looking at this from a business continuity perspective, I see many challenges to businesses that would need to be planned for and considered.  For starters, does your business rely on a good water supply for sanitation or other purposes (e.g. restaurants, healthcare, barbers and hair salons, etc.)?  If so, can your business function without water just to run your critical functions - probably not.  Even if you are not in that situation, what business with employees can function without water for restrooms and hand washing for 3-5 days?  I can’t think of any.  Not to mention the non-life threatening discomforts of employees hygiene or (gasp) the utter lack of coffee.  Even with a few days’ notice, how could businesses in the area properly prepare, especially small businesses that rely on day to day customers to survive?  And closing any business for 3-5 days can be significant to catastrophic depending on the business.  Now consider if there was no advanced notice?

Put your business in this situation – would you be ready to deal with this?  Would you have plans in place to have employees work from alternate locations or telework?  Does your business have alternatives to just closing shop while you wait for the water to be restored?  What would you do if the main broke in the middle of a Monday night and you were told water would be out for an entire week?  Looking at these concerns makes you realize that what is usually assumed to be a minor problem (such as water line repairs) can become a significant business disruption very quickly.  The good news is if you have a strong business continuity plan and a good communication system with your employees you may still be able to treat this kind of a situation as an annoyance rather than a catastrophe. 

In the last few months we’ve seen protests both peaceful and not peaceful.  Regardless of your personal opinions of the various causes and reasons, businesses have to think about how they should prepare and respond during a civil disturbance.  There are various possible impacts on businesses during protests and they range from minor inconveniences like increased road traffic to major business damage to your physical facilities.  In the worst case, it could include direct risk to employee safety.  There are many variables to consider in your planning for a civil disturbance, but here are a couple of issues that are critical to consider.

First of all, as a responsible employer you need to consider the safety of your employees.  Is your workplace safe?  Can employees get to and from work safely without crossing protest boundaries?  Are customers, suppliers, or other visitors to your business safe?  If the answer is no to any of these questions, you have some planning to do.  Some people would automatically suggest “just close the office” but this isn’t always a good business decision either.  Can you have your employees telework or work from an alternate office?  Do you need to hire extra security?  Can you use alternate work schedules to have employees come in at off hours when it may be safer?  What alternatives do you have to deliver service to your customers if your office is not accessible or they don’t feel comfortable coming to your office?

Another important issue to consider is your communication with employees.  You may need to provide instructions in off business hours so how will you do that as a manager or business owner?  If you don’t have a good communication process in place before you need it, you will quickly realize that you really wished you had.  The good news is if you establish a good communication process it is multi-purpose and beneficial during any kind of incident. 

One more issue I’ll mention is your response and recovery plans.  Do you know what you will do if something happens?  Your response and recovery processes (for civil disturbances and all other disruptive incidents) should be well documented in your business continuity plan. 

Civil unrest, protests, and riots are one of many threats businesses need to plan for.  It doesn’t matter if you’re in a big city that has to deal with massive political protests or in a small college town that could suffer from a local college “victory party” riot because your local team won a bit title, your business needs to have a plan in place of what you will do should it happen.