Forum focuses on small-business emergency needs

An emergency-planning forum in Norwell on Jan. 17 focused on the needs of small businesses, which often lack the resources to respond adequately to a natural disaster.

The session, organized by Norwell Fire Chief and Emergency Management Director Andrew Reardon and the town’s Chamber of Commerce, focused on how developing continuity-of-operations plans can protect small businesses from devastating losses.

“I thought it was fascinating, the dollars per-hour calculation that some [business owners] put forth” to illustrate how long a business could endure before the inability to sell their products would doom them, Reardon said.

“If you’re a small business and losing $2,500 to $3,000 a week by not bringing in income, you’ll be in trouble very quickly,” Reardon added. “I think that’s an important message for people to hear.”

Small businesses, Reardon said, also often need help in providing required documentation to state and federal relief agencies.

Forum speakers included Meg Doherty, director of the Norwell Visiting Nurses Association, who emphasized the need for her organization to be able to help seniors in the aftermath of a natural or man-made disaster. Doherty cited the example of a VNA in Louisiana that went out of business after Hurricane Katrina.

Those who attended the session were advised to be wary of cloud-computing companies that offer extremely low fees for data-backup services for businesses. Some businesses, Reardon said, discover that their backup companies have gone out of business when they are most needed.