SOS: can your business handle the challenge?

• Author: Moore, Melissa
• Position: Preparing for natural disasters - Cover Story

Businesses in the Last Frontier face a few geographical risks, such as operating above shifting subsurface plates that create a veritable tectonic time bomb. Or in the midst of active volcanoes. Or temperamental weather.

Businesses also face loss to more ordinary disasters, such as fires, water leaks or utility failures.

But take heart, there are ways to prepare any business for both natural disasters and the ones that hit a single business. With a little planning, many disasters can be avoided.

THE CLOCK'S TICKING

In Alaska, earthquakes shake the ground to some degree every day. People don't feel most of them, but most experts agree the question is not "if" another big one like the devastating 1964 quake will come, but "when," said Robert Stewart, director of the Municipality of Anchorage's Emergency Management Office.

Recent statistics show that Alaska is home to about 52 percent of all U.S. earthquakes and 11 percent of all world earthquakes. In fact, three of the six largest earthquakes in the world shook in the Great Land. And since 1900, the state has had an average of one earthquake with a magnitude of 8 or larger about every 13 years. Tremors like these - each with an energy source equivalent to approximately 36,700 Hiroshima-size atomic bombs - cause the ground to roll in waves and can demolish entire cities.

Earthquakes centered in or near the water can cause tsunamis, or tidal waves, also known to destroy entire towns. On that fateful Good Friday of '64, many Anchorage small businesses were destroyed and the port was severely damaged, as were the ports in Seward and Kodiak. The town of Valdez was swept away.

Earthquakes, however, aren't the only geological hazard. In the past 200 years, more than 40 of the state's volcanoes have erupted. The biggest threat is fine ash, a highly abrasive substance that does not dissolve in water and can create havoc on lungs and machinery. Flooding and permafrost can also destroy a business; flooding for obvious reasons, and permafrost due to thawing, which causes buildings to settle unevenly. And then there are fires, burst pipes, and other risks that affect the single business.

"A fire can be a catastrophe for a small business," said Stewart. "If a fire burns up all your computer files and they are not backed up, you lose all your records. You don't know who your clients are."

Whether or not your business can survive through these and other disasters is based in part by chance, and in part by...