Some of you may know that I live in San Diego. You might have heard that we had several little fires here last week. I was safe and just had to deal with really bad air quality, however over 600,000 people were less fortunate. Those people had to evacuate homes and businesses, some of which were lost to the fires.

Most of us sit around watching disasters on the news with the mindset that "it can't happen to me." We feel somehow immune to the loss and heartbreak that is affecting those caught up in the middle of the current disaster. If you watch national, or international, news you know (at least intellectually) that disasters are unpredictable. In business, you can't afford to be caught by the unpredictable.

As a business owner, you are responsible for the safety of your employees and for the longevity of your business. This means you need to plan and prepare for the unexpected. An Emergency Action Plan helps you let your employees know what they should do and where they should go in an emergency. You want to make sure your employees understand your alert system and who is designated to be in charge of the situation. Getting all your employees to a safe place and having roll call ensures that everyone got safely out of your facility. People have a tendency to panic in emergencies, so it's your job to give them the rules to be followed in those situations.

Don't stop with your people, though. What would happen to your business if you were unable to enter the facility and/or produce product for the next two months? If you have developed a business emergency plan, you'll probably be just fine. The difference with this plan is that the focus is on continuing business operations. When I worked in San Francisco, my company rented warehouse space in Sacramento and kept a quantity of fresh product there for emergencies. This ensured that we could keep shipping product even if our San Francisco facility was damaged. Do you have a plan in place?

It can't happen to me? Yeah, right. I lived in San Francisco when we were hit by the 7.1 earthquake, I live in San Diego where we have fall fires that are nearly as predictable as the turning of leaves in other states, and my mother lived (past tense) in a little town in Nebraska that was completely flattened by two F5 tornadoes. I can tell you that I've been lucky but personally know several people who were less so.

The thing to remember about all these unpredictable disasters is that they really are unpredictable. However, this doesn't mean you just shrug and cross your fingers. As you do with all other aspects of your business, you make a plan for the "what if."