When Disasters Hit – A Business Continuity Amazon Order List

My good friend, Mike Semel from Semel Consulting, has put together an amazing business continuity resource for healthcare organizations. Of course, a lot of this applies personally as well as professionally. You should download the full Semel Consulting Disaster Checklist to see how prepared you and your business are for disaster. This resource seemed appropriate as we watch Florida get hit with more tropical storms and hurricanes, wildfires happening in California and disaster after disaster happening around the world with no signs that they’ll be stopping.

Along with the checklist linked above, Mike also included a list of emergency items you can easily order on Amazon (see the list below with links) to make sure you and your healthcare organization are prepared in case of disaster. This is important since the time to prepare for a disaster is now. Once the disaster happens, stores sell out and you can’t get the things you’ll need to ride out the disaster. As an illustration of this, Mike shared his experience during SuperStorm Sandy:

The generator at my NY home burns 7 gallons per day. Before SuperStorm Sandy I bought the last two 5-gallon cans from my local Lowes, to add to the 5 I already had, so I could store 5 days of fuel. I was in line with about 50 people buying generators. I asked them how many gas cans they had at home and how much fuel they could store. Everyone said they had one can – the biggest was 5 gallons – not even enough to fill the generator once! They all wanted to pay me double or triple what the cans I was buying were worth. I didn’t sell.

Note: These are all Prime-Eligible for quick delivery. Click on the link to order.

Now for the list of emergency items on Amazon that Mike suggests you consider as part of your business continuity efforts.

Radio – weather channel, hand-crank, solar charger, flashlight

Batteries – AAA, AA, C-cell, D-Cell (for lanterns and radios), 9 volt, 2032 lithium

Lantern

Solar charger

External cell phone battery

115-hour candle – make sure you have matches

Water Jug

LifeStraw – for when the water supply isn’t safe to drink

Water Purification Tablets – for when the water supply isn’t safe to drink

Emergency Sleeping Bag

Emergency 2-person 3-day kit

Emergency Food – 18 400-calorie bars – during a disaster you need strength – eat calories!

Emergency Food – 12 meals – 3 days

Emergency Food – 30 days – good for businesses; preparation for sheltering-in-place

Toilet Paper – you won’t laugh when you are the only one in the shelter who thought ahead!

Gas Cans – Generators use 7 gallons per day if run continuously. Most people have less than 5 gallons for their mower.

Along with the stuff you should buy above, be sure to check out the full Disaster Checklist that covers a number of other things you should do to prepare for a disaster.

What have you done in your practice to prepare for emergencies? Are there other things you’d suggest that aren’t on this list? Let us know in the comments or on social media with @healthcarescene.

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

   

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