Scenario: Class 4 Hurricane hits the local area. Power is out, water from flooding blocks all travel to the south and east. Local residents have doubled our max capacity for pets as they dropped them off at our front doorstep on their way to shelter. Internet and phone lines are down, and cell service is so congested, only SMS go through, and with unreliability.
Physical Preparations: * All pets wear collars that are clearly marked and coincide with their primary key in our database. * Backup lighting installed and inspected quarterly - 12hr battery life. * Backup generator with fuel to last 72 hours. * Emergency food and water stored in basement. * Three hard copy evacuation routes for each hot site location * Emergency printable animal / owner roster pre-created & available to be printed at any time. * Emergency backup power for server and main computer (allow time for generator to power on)
Before:
This is a challenging step because in this part of the plan you must decide if you will be staying or evacuating. The safest time to evacuate is prior to the emergency. If you've determined the hurricane will be manageable and you stay, you will have to:
Monitor news, check battery levels, maintain accurate roster, touch base with alternate hot sites, prepare a go kit should you have to move (includes evacuation route maps, swappable hard disks, pet / owner rosters, employee emergency contacts, DR plan), contact hot sites and determine availability
During:
Unfortunately, this is often the most helpless of the steps. Number one priority should be safety. Individuals should move to predetermined hurricane locations in the center of the building under tables or other supportive objects. This is a time to keep each other calm and wait it out. Things to consider doing if safely able to be done are:
Provide first aid if needed, monitor news, encourage calmness.
After:
During this phase you will assess the damage, to individuals first, then facilities. Facilitate first aid and evacuation for any personnel in need. Then assess the pets and facilities and react accordingly.
Minor damage: This includes minor to moderate damage to facilities, intermittent connectivity, and other damages to non-critical systems. Continue operations as usual, begin notifying patrons if possible
Moderate damage: Moderate damage to the facility that create safety concerns to animals or personnel. Not total system outage, but one or more key system failures. Determination made if evacuation will be necessary.
Severe Damage: Damage to facility or systems that makes business operation impossible. Immediately begin evacuation plan to closest hot site.

Because of the nature of the services that are provided by this small neighborhood veterinary clinic, the recovery portion of the plan will split into two portions. The first portion will be physical disaster recovery and the second will be information recovery. Traditional hot site locations offer working solutions for workplace continuity, however because of the specific medical and animal housing requirements, our recovery solution needs are specific and allow for few only a options.
Our organization has partnered four with regional clinics between 15 and 100 miles from our clinic. These clinics have agreed to participate in acting as a physical hot site for transporting, housing, and caring for our animals should a relocation be required. This includes offering their IT Systems for our use. In return we have agreed to do the same for them.
The information recovery solution will also be broken down into two provisions. The first provision a cloud based virtual "hot site" where we can back up server information in near real time. This will allow for access of customer and patient information at any of the 4 alternate hot sites. This however, presents equipment and program compatibility concerns at the alternate sites. Will their IT systems be able to make use of what is stored in our backup systems effectively? To provide seamless transition should there be a natural disaster, each clinic has agreed to have a minimum of one computer maintained with a partitioned image of our system, to include all necessary programs we regularly use. This will enable us to be able to simply restart a computer and log into our own systems with access to our current database. We will also maintain 4 hot swappable onsite backup hard drives that will be backed up nightly and easily available should there be a need to quickly evacuate.
While this isn't the traditional means to plan for a disaster, it is the best way to ensure the highest of quality care for our pets in the event relocation due to a disaster is necessary.