Hurricane Dorian moved into North Carolina on Thursday night after pounding South Carolina earlier in the day and leveling portions of the Bahamas earlier this week.. The storm's path of destruction includes:
- 189,000 power outages in South Carolina.
- 89,000 power outages in North Carolina.
- In North Carolina, predictions of rainfall in excess of 10 inches continued to grow, with nearly all coastal counties expected to get 10 to 15 inches of rain, according to the National Hurricane Center.
- Hurricane Dorian has also caused widespread loss of life. The storm-related death toll in the Bahamas stands at 30 people, but is expected to climb significantly as search, rescue and recovery efforts continue.
- Sources: The State, Data Fusion Solutions and CNN.
On the business front, channel partners, IT service providers and MSPs (managed services providers) throughout North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia continue to activate business continuity plans, and double-check data protection and disaster recovery plans.
Example disaster recovery plans include: Mike Semel‘s freely available Disaster Checklist (from 2018) and a Datto-produced tip sheet (also from 2018) that includes these recommendations:
- Send out the storm plan to your employees, customers and partners. Include a communications schedule and stick to it.
- If your business cannot withstand a period of lengthy downtime, secure a facility further inland for you and your employees or ensure everyone is able to work remotely.
- Tropical storms and hurricanes can put data centers out of commission. Make sure your business data, backups, applications, and server images are stored off-site.
- The company has a Natural Disaster Recovery Guide here.
Hurricane Dorian: Small Business Disaster Recovery Loans
If Hurricane Dorian triggers major damage, it’s a safe bet the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) may offer a loan program to get small businesses back on their feet.
Information about such loans typically surfaces a few days or weeks after a storm event via these communication pipelines:
- Visit DisasterLoan.sba.gov for loan information;
- Call the SBA Customer Service Center at 800-659-2955 (800-877-8339 for the deaf and hard-of-hearing); or
- email [email protected].
MSPs: Thriving After a Storm?
While some MSPs may worry cash flow and customer health after a hurricane or tropical storm, benchmarking data from Service Leadership Inc. suggests MSPs and IT service providers actually thrived amid post-Hurricane Harvey recovery efforts in Houston.
The likely reason: Customers are willing to pay a premium to get back up and running quickly, and they’re also more interested in ongoing data protection services after a major storm, according to Service Leadership CEO Paul Dippell.
Stay tuned to this blog for ongoing Hurricane Dorian updates from ChannelE2E.
