What better place for a crisis manager to be than directly in the path of an oncoming hurricane? I am temporarily resident in Naples, FL, visiting my mother in her condo, which is located approx. 1/2 mile in from the Gulf. This is the end of a two week swing through the Southeast, checking out possible future semi-retirement locations, and MY plan was to go home on Tuesday afternoon. However, man plans, God laughs, and barring a currently unforeseen DRAMATIC turn Fay will be squarely overhead on Tuesday. So what type of contingency planning does a crisis manager do?
- Ensured that my mother is fully stocked with survival supplies
- Filled both her car and my rental with gas
- Established primary (phone, cellphone, SPRINT PCS card powered email for my notebook computer and my mom’s ISP/cable for her computer) and secondary (Blackberry PIN) communications channels with family and other contacts out of state
- Asked my travel agent to hold a flight out for me Wednesday afternoon on an airline OTHER THAN the one on which I’m already booked for Tuesday, in case rescheduling with the latter is difficult
- Washed my dirty travel clothes in mom’s washer while we know we have electricity (hey, clean underwear if the a/c goes out will be particularly good for morale, y’know?)
- Made arrangements with my SEO expert/website designer/blog guru Chesa Keane to maintain messages about the storm-in-progress for me on this blog in the event that I’m knocked offline but can relay text to her via one of the aforementioned means.
- Ensured that all my devices are fully charged.
I hope to be able to upload pics and maybe even some streaming video. The connection in this part of town is weak at best, unfortunately, but I’ll do my best!
Jonathan Bernstein
President
Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc.