This week has seen some of the worst flooding in generations in Houston with hundreds of homes evacuated and, as-of-yet untold millions of dollars of damage. In addition to the loss of lives throughout the area and the mounting destruction of the flooding, there actually seems to be even more water rising on the horizon. Though the flooding in Houston has already raised the Brazos River to well over 50 feet where it once ran dry only two years ago, the area is expected to receive another 1-3 inches of rain by the weekend. With this type of increasingly destructive force mounting in the area, the flooding in Houston has effectively driven entire communities from their homes and those who’ve remained are at a standstill.
Spotty Flood Insurance Coverage
Flood Insurance isn’t federally mandated as a part of homeownership even though flooding is routinely the costliest natural disaster in the United States. As a result, many homes affected by flooding aren’t covered for this nearly predictable event. The coverage of flood insurance is so incomplete that in 2014 the total damage caused to US homeowners was $3.5 billion whereas the National Flood Insurance Program of the United States receive only paid out $345 million in claims. While it’s too early to tell how much damage the flooding in Houston will cost or the coverage that the affected residents may have, it isn’t too soon for some businesses to begin leveraging their own safety nets for such a disaster.
Disaster Recovery & Emergency Failover
Businesses will have to begin sorting through the rubble after the water recedes just like homeowners, but for some savvy business owners the fallout will be lessened substantially. This is because, while the flooding in Houston has affected all of the area equally, not all of the companies located there have equivalent business telephone systems or telecommunications strategies. For the businesses with a comprehensive business continuity plan including a telephone failover system, they have been able to head for high ground and take their business with them.
Evacuating a flooded area never has to mean evacuating your operations when you have a hosted disaster recovery tool like PBX Parachute. PBX Parachute is a mirror of your company’s existing telephone network hosted in a secured location that will deploy whenever there is a situation that makes your office inaccessible or that renders your communications inoperable. By including PBX Parachute as a part of their standard operating procedures, businesses in Houston and all over the world are able to stay open and profitable during even the most catastrophic of situations.
It’s Never Too Early to Begin Planning
Take care to include a completed Business Continuity Plan (BCP) into your company’s emergency planning, and use our online resources to make sure your employees are safe first, and productive second. Then to get the most out of your BCP, talk to one of our disaster recovery experts to set-up a free demo of the industry’s most-awarded emergency failover system, PBX Parachute. Until then, stay safe, stay dry, and our most sincere wishes for safety and security go out to all of the families in and around the Houston area.
