Why Tabletop Scenarios Are Key to Severe Weather Preparedness

When severe weather is in the forecast, your business must be prepared for anything. An emergency preparedness tabletop scenario can help you identify strengths, weaknesses, and areas to improve your severe weather plan before severe weather threatens.

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SEVERE WEATHER TABLETOP EXERCISE

Damaging straight-line winds. Tornadoes. Severe thunderstorms. Flash flooding. No matter the forecast, your business must prepare for weather-related impacts and be ready for any situation, from rapidly sheltering staff in place to major logistical issues from multi-day weather events. While the process may sound daunting, the good news is you can prepare for all reasonable disruptions by participating in a tabletop exercise. It’s an informal setting that generates discussion about hypothetical or simulated severe weather emergencies. 

Tabletops are discussion-based exercises that evaluate a specific plan, process, or response objective against a reasonable scenario. They are simple to plan and can dramatically decrease weather-related business disruptions' impact. Weather-related tabletops start with the help of the meteorologists at AccuWeather For Business. We can help you improve your current severe weather plan, and if you don’t have one, we can work with you to put one in place. You can test your business processes, whether shutting down equipment, getting people to shelter, or getting critical information out to employees. The exercise will also help identify gaps in business continuity plans. 

Here are some key points to keep in mind during your exercise: 

• Communication 

Communication in a weather emergency is critical. You can and should walk through your communications plan during the exercise. Discuss how you would handle communications if they reach all persons and what backup methods of communication are available if the primary method fails. Make sure you have three ways to receive weather notifications and three ways to disseminate them! 

• Sheltering

One of the most challenging aspects of tornado & damaging straight-line wind response is sheltering. Discuss how long your staff will take to shelter, where they will shelter, and if the shelter will meet their needs as outlined by FEMA guidelines. Do not assume that your shelter location will protect you from a tornado unless you’ve spoken to an engineer, local fire department, or expert on the structure.

• Initiating the Plan

Who is in charge when there is a severe weather emergency? Identify an emergency manager who will lead the emergency response during each shift. Discuss what resources that individual will need, how frequently they need to train, and their limitations. Routine business disruption can become a major disaster without clear leadership.

• Complete a business impact assessment

Complete a business impact assessment for critical systems that a weather event could disrupt. It’s a chance to document what equipment, IT systems, and physical dependencies you need to operate your business if not done already. It will also let you put parameters that cover edge cases, or a problem or situation that happens in extreme situations, for severe weather. For example, determine what windspeed critical elevated platform equipment, such as vertical lifts, scissor lifts, and others, must be shut down and how long that process might take. AccuWeather For Business can help you through this. 

Once you are finished with the exercise, you can determine your emergency plan’s strengths and weaknesses. The outcome of the exercise will also give you a list of improvements, verified assumptions, and tasks to complete to improve the plan. 

Ready to conduct your own tabletop exercise or simply want to learn more about how you can protect your business, employees, and assets during severe weather season?

Contact AccuWeather today to get AccuWeather's SkyGuard^® Severe Weather Warnings to better prepare your business for all severe weather threats.

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