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>Forewarned, forearmed
Date: August 20, 2003
Forewarned, forearmed
By Mark
McNeil, The Hamilton Spectator
While more than 50 million people struggled with the largest power outage in North America last week, Walt Juchniewicz went about his business not even noticing what had happened.
Juchniewicz, president of Juch-Tech Inc. and operator of Hamilton Teleport, said he noticed "our measurements were kind of strange" prior to the blackout.
"By our voltage fluctuations, we knew in the early morning that things were not right with our power."
So he switched over to a diesel-run generator backup system as a precaution.
The company on Green Mountain Road in Stoney Creek beams video, telecom messages and other information off satellites. It requires about 40 kilowatts of power, about as much as a medium-sized television broadcasting tower.
"We didn't really know the ramifications of the outage until we drove away and saw all the traffic jams."
Juchniewicz says his company has an elaborate system for dealing with disasters.
"And I'll tell you right now, it was worth every penny. We work with other teleports and can steer traffic to them and vice versa. Some services out of New York ended up turning around here during the outage."
While Hamilton Teleport kept running after the power went off shortly after 4 p.m. last Thursday, the blackout is seen as a wakeup call to other businesses on the need for disaster and continuity planning.
As companies count the losses from spoiled goods and lost production, experts say the blackout was exactly the kind of situation businesses should plan for well in advance.
"The point is that things happen and to properly manage your business, you need to anticipate some of these problems," said Hamilton lawyer Jay Rosenblatt, who recently spoke at the World Conference on Disaster Management in Toronto about legal risks and risk management in emergency planning.
"You can't deal with every eventuality but you have to focus on things that could likely happen and deal with them. ...You can't say I didn't think this would happen."
Rosenblatt said it's not just direct losses from lost production that companies have to worry about. They can be sued for breach of contract and negligence.
"If the lights go out and there are no suitable backup systems in place, what happens if a customer or employee falls and is injured?"
If company officials are unable to show that they exercised due diligence in preparing for the disaster, it could lead to a large judgment in a civil proceeding. But the bigger issue for most businesses is making sure that data isn't lost from computer systems.
"If your data is lost because the system is fried or flooded or whatever ... it could take days to restore. You have a problem."
Hamilton Utilities Corp. company FibreWired recently began offering an automatic data backup service called Fibresecure.
Data is transferred over fibre lines to a storage facility once a day or at whatever intervals the customer wants.
The service is interesting because companies usually end up backing up their data on tape and having to physically carry it to an off site, secure location.
Burlington information technology consultant Philip Papadopoulos estimates only 25 per cent of companies have off-site storage of backup data.
"I don't think in general that businesses are prepared very well," he said.
Some firms reassure themselves by figuring that if they go down so will everyone else and it will just be accepted by customers, he said.
But he contends power outages can be more localized, leaving some companies down but their competitors still operating.
"If a small to mid-size business is down for a week, it could be devastating for them."
Papadopoulos contends last week's blackout has made disaster and continuity planning a timely topic. However he also said, "Two weeks from now, I don't believe people are going to be thinking about it that much.
"It will drop off the radar screen until the next issue occurs."
mmcneil@thespec.com or 905-526-4687