Post by Howard Pierpont, International Association for Disaster Preparedness and Response
Disasters happen all the time. The Federal government declares on average one disaster per week. The reality is most disasters do not have national focus. Often an issue can be localized to a community, a neighborhood, or a single facility. Every disaster is personal when it occurs inside your organization. A ruptured pipe, overflowing faucet, wide temperature fluctuations, and external factors can impact the organization.
Recently, I was invited to participate in a day-long, interactive workshop in Caguas, Puerto Rico, to teach how to successfully engage small businesses so they are better prepared for future disasters and crises. The hands-on workshop covered the basics of how to deliver business continuity training to the local community. The audience included commercial as well as not-for-profit organizations.
I invite you to review the presentations included here.
Additional websites with great reference material include:
• Open For Business
• Ready.gov
• US Small Business Administration (SBA), which also act as one of the financial clearinghouses for FEMA
• Prepare My Business.org, a sponsored website from the SBA
• The Ready Rating program from the American Red Cross
• Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety, funded by insurance companies
• The Voluntary Private Sector Preparedness Program – PS-Prep™ & Small Business Preparedness (last updated 8/6/2014)
• FEMA Program Resources (last updated 8/7/2014)
Feel free to contact me with any questions you might have.
Howard Pierpont
Board Chair, DERA, International Association for Disaster Preparedness and Response
970-397-5526
State Heritage Emergency Partnership 
This is an amazing idea and I will definitely extend this to my workplace! The more people or places are prepared the better off everyone is because the Gov or ERTs don’t have to worry about you!