When Hurricane Ike roared ashore on Galveston Island on Sept. 12, 2008, it could have been devastating for the University of Texas.   Ike’s winds spanned an area over 500 miles and topped 110 miles per hour, and the storm produced nearly 8 inches of rainfall.  Even worse, the eye of the storm hit land approximately two hours before high tide.

“I remember thinking, hopefully it won’t hit here,” says Philip Dendy, Director of the Office of Risk Management for the University of Texas System.  “But you can’t just hope.”

By the time Ike made landfall, Dendy and his colleagues at UT had done far more than hope for the best.  They had activated a comprehensive plan that accounted for nearly every detail: Not just water extraction, hazardous waste removal, generators, diesel fuel, and portable toilets, but employee health insurance and counseling services as well.  UT’s emergency planning operations are part of their broader business continuity function, which is coordinated by Dendy’s office.

Planning for emergencies may seem abstract, but a carefully implemented plan can be the difference between being able to reopen after disaster strikes, and shutting down for good.  The practice known as disaster recovery began in the 1960s and 1970s when companies began using large mainframe computer systems, says Kelly Okolita, a business continuity and disaster recovery consultant with over 20 years of experience.  Companies began to realize how dependent they were on their data centers.  But by the 1980s companies began to take a more holistic view of their operations.  “It started to become clear that this was a business issue as opposed to a tech issue,” says Okolita.

For Okolita, business continuity is understanding how long your business can be closed before it is forced to shut down.  Businesses may close because of events as dramatic as hurricanes, or because of something as simple as a burst pipe or lightning storm.  Okolita acknowledges that organizations often find it difficult to justify the resources and time for planning for something that everyone hopes will never happen.  But, she says, “My job is to scare the crap out of people” to get them to plan.

Al Berman, executive director of the Disaster Recovery Institute International, says that continuity planning is becoming more common – and even expected – among medium and large organizations.  “Customers want to know that your company has a plan – that you’re going to be there if something goes wrong,” he says.   In fact, the Department of Homeland Security has developed a program called the Voluntary Private Sector Preparedness Accreditation and Certification Program, which allows private sector organizations to receive emergency preparedness certifications from Homeland Security.

The University of Texas began watching Ike as early as Sept. 2, with Dendy and the emergency team giving daily updates to executive leadership and UT’s member institutions.  Dendy’s office was also busy activating contracts that had already negotiated with various vendors, including those who would handle clean-up and recovery.  “You hope that you don’t have to use these contracts,” Dendy says, “but they’re there if you do.  And Ike was a situation that required everything.”

Students were released on Sept. 10, and non-essential personnel on Sept. 11.   UT’s Medical Branch, a hospital and medical school on Galveston Island, began specific preparations, including evacuating nearly 400 patients.   “UTMB had evacuated the entire hospital in a similar manner in 2005 in preparation for Hurricane Rita,” says Dendy.  “Fortunately, Rita was just a glancing blow but the evacuation was a ‘real life’ practice for Ike and was one reason it went smoothly.”

Dendy rates UT’s response modestly.  “Overall,” he says, “programs responded the way they were supposed to.”  Indeed, although UTMB’s buildings sustained damage, the students were back to school within two to five weeks and the spring semester and commencement were held on schedule.  The first clinic on Galveston Island reopened two weeks after the storm, and Jennifer Ramirez-Hernandez became the first baby born on the island, on Oct. 13, one month after Ike hit.

Yet there are times when the best-laid emergency plans do not address everything.  Kelly Okolita was working for a large insurance company’s New Orleans branch in 2005 when weather reports began to signal that a hurricane called Katrina might be a threat.  Like UT, Okolita began her response to the storm with careful vigilance and communication.

“By Saturday morning the weather report wasn’t clear, but we made the decision to close the office on Monday no matter what,” Okolita says.  “We scheduled a call for Monday.  Well, some people weren’t able to make it to the call on Monday night.  By Tuesday morning we thought we’d dodged a bullet, but then Tuesday afternoon the levees broke.”

As part of its emergency plan, the company had a special mobile unit – like a tractor trailer – equipped with satellite phones, a washroom, desks and chairs, and Internet connectivity.  But in the chaos after Katrina, many employees scattered.  They also had an 800-number, but 800-number services were unavailable after the storm.  In addition to ensuring the safety and stability of its employees and business operations, the company had the additional challenge of needing to be able to handle insurance claims related to the storm.

For both Okolita and Dendy, managing the personal impact of the storm was just as critical as managing the business impact.  “If you don’t take care of the humans, you can’t take care of the business,” says Okolita.  She realized that it was more important to reach out to people than to wait for them to reach in.  The company had established a contingency line for employees to call for updates.  “We made the contingency line an ‘I’m OK line’ – if you were from New Orleans you could press 1 and get a human rather than a recording.”

At UTMB, many of the Galveston residents who rode out the storm lost their homes.  “A significant amount of time had to be spent with those people, helping them,” says Dendy.  And because the storm hit on payday for hourly workers, staff “went to extraordinary efforts to get money to those hourly employees.”   UTMB’s Human Resources department began working with UT’s central benefits department to ensure that people who evacuated could confirm their health insurance coverage wherever they wound up.  “It was a bad deal for folks.  It was very traumatic,” says Dendy.

Okolita believes that people who get back into a routine, including working, are better able to cope with a disaster.  “People need their work families too,” she says.  She organized ice cream socials for the employees who were able to return to work, and the company hosted community meetings.

Building on a lesson learned during Ike, UT is prioritizing posting course materials to its Web site so that classes can continue online in case of a disaster.  “We need to be sure we’re always ready to continue our mission,” Dendy says.   Indeed, for industry veterans like Al Berman, good plans stress continuity of business operations rather than emergency response.  “We can’t tell you what the next incident is going to be,” he says, “but we can tell you how to get back in business.”