As we mentioned last week, RSR’s galactic headquarters in Miami were affected by Hurricane Irma. While we were spared a direct hit, many trees are down all over town and power is still out over about half Miami-Dade County (including said headquarters). In fact, without ten years of planning, including a mammoth whole house generator, galactic headquarters would be a very cranky place to be.

In the midst of all this insanity, I wanted to spend a few minutes talking about some positive things. For the most part, people have been surprisingly respectful. Legendarily rude Miami drivers have figured out how to courteously navigate major street corners without any working stop lights, and people with power have taken in “refugees ” who aren’t as lucky. I’ve cycled through six so far, myself.

We have seen very little price gouging. Gas prices are up, but they were already up after Harvey passed through Texas. Restaurants lucky enough to have power seem to be able to get food to sell, and both the local Publix and Whole Foods Market are stocked with essentials and more. That’s impressive all by itself. If you are inclined to come down to steamy Miami Beach, power has been completely restored, and hotels are once-in-a-lifetime cheap. In fact, a colleague from Cisco is coming down to do some volunteer work, and secured a very high-end hotel room on South Beach for $133 per night.

So the long and short of our current status in Miami is power if you’re lucky, food and hospitality are fully available and gas lines winding down to nothing.

Now I’d like to turn to the last thing in the title: Contingency planning. When I was a CIO, it was incumbent on public companies to have a disaster recovery plan. That was as basic as having a hot site and cold site for computers, and a place for the workers to meet as we planned for resumption of work activities.

I am certainly fifteen years removed from my days as a CIO, but I wonder, how many of us have real disaster recovery plans in place. Certainly the Cloud and Moore’s Law have made things a lot easier. Data is much more easily stored off-site, and for some of us, our corporate headquarters are mostly just end-points where computers are available to grab what’s already stored or running in the Cloud. But where are the people going to work? What are they going to do? What’s the business resumption plan?

If you don’t have a disaster recovery plan, my best advice is to start working on one. Again, I was really impressed by both Publix and WFM… Publix has some enormous generators outside my local store. That didn’t happen overnight. It took time, thought and effort. My pool supply dealer still can only take cash… no backup plan. They’re still crazy busy, and most consumers know to grab cash before a storm, but my own cash is gone now… gone to my gardener and the pool supply store. If I need more, there is trouble.

To put it in perspective, I have been working on hurricane contingency planning at headquarters (okay… it’s my house!), since Katrina and Wilma came through a decade ago. Three weeks without power in the heat of summer (it may be fall in New England, but as I write this it is 89 degrees with a “feels like ” of 98 here in Miami) is untenable for most human beings. We evolved from a generator, to a generator with an automatic transfer switch, to an even bigger generator that can run 24/7. I bought a digital TV antenna and re-initiated my wireless hot spot (though I have burned through 6 gb of data in 5 days, it’s not a fortune to just buy more). I could theoretically do a laundry, the generator is so big, but my spouse has persuaded me to go easy on it. If there’s no power by Monday, I’ll have the unenviable task of changing the oil and filter in the generator. Again, none of this is fun in the beating sun, but it is part of the process. Just like your car’s motor, the generator motor needs clean oil to run well.

The long and the short of it is that plans need to be in place, equipment must be in good working order, and longer-term plans in the event the outage is extended must also be well-documented.

Next week, we’ll hopefully be reporting that power has been restored and all is well! And for my friends in the Northeast, say hello to Jose!