Bracing for Disaster

On June 5, 1917, Gov. Frederick Gardner declared a holiday. Two months and one day earlier, America entered World War I. June 5 was Registration Day. Around 5,000 men registered in Boone County, 1,129 of them in Columbia — the Daily Missourian declared there were “no slackers here.” The mayor held a patriotic celebration at the courthouse that afternoon, part of which involved a sales pitch for liberty bonds. Then night fell. The early summer heat receded.

Around 10 that night, the rain was falling hard and the wind was blowing fast in Columbia when, some 20 miles away, the tornado reached Centralia. It moved northeasterly through the town. It yanked telephone poles out of the ground and threw them hundreds of yards. It ripped roofs off houses and barns. Livestock disappeared, and the tornado disassembled a Ford so completely that the largest piece left of the car was an intact radiator. The tornado grabbed a woman, Mrs. Roy Douglas, who tightly held her baby as they flew off the ground and dropped 200 yards away. Both survived. The tornado hurled a piece of timber into a child’s bedroom. The timber scratched the child’s face, but the child survived.

But the tornado did kill 20 people in all, including Roy Douglas, who was less lucky than his wife and baby. The next day’s Daily Missourian — the June 6, 1917 edition — recounted the tornado’s sweep, “destroying everything in its path of about one hundred yards wide.” It wound 47 violent miles through Boone County, coming as close to Columbia as Midway, about 7 miles west of town, before arcing around the city’s northern edge.

A week after the storm, the Columbia Insurance and Rental Agency took out a square ad on the third page of the Missourian. They headlined it, in bold, “Tornadoes.” They listed 11 property owners “saved from total loss,” and included the price of a tornado insurance policy: $4.00 per $1,000 insured for three years.

Disaster insurance has evolved since the 1917 Boone County Tornado, but the motives for preparedness largely remain the same: in the unlikely event that disaster strikes, what happens? Natural disasters — tornadoes, floods, blizzards, earthquakes, or any other — are inherently spectral. How should businesses protect themselves?

“The state then ranked the counties by total vulnerability,” one part of the report says. “Since tornadoes are random in their location, it was decided to consider the low end of the vulnerability scale to have a Moderate Risk and the high end to have a Very High Risk. The planning area/Boone County was among thirteen counties identified as having a Very High Risk for tornadoes.”he Boone County Hazard Mitigation Plan could enthrall a paranoiac for hours. The plan spends 424 pages exploring every avenue of a potential disaster in the county: how many dams would probably kill people if they failed (potentially as many as 45 dams ), which parts of town could slip into a sinkhole (the south, and some of the northeast), how many dollars of damage an EF2 tornado would cause Columbia ($19,114,169) and how many dollars for an EF3 ($80,784,412), the chances that a 6.0 or greater earthquake would come from the New Madrid Fault (25 to 40 percent), the chances of a 7.5 to 8.0 quake (seven to 10 percent), and what sort of damage that quake would inflict on Boone County (considerable, especially in poorly built structures). The list goes on, but the general conclusion of the report is that lots of disasters could threaten Boone County. But the biggest threat is tornadoes.

And while a tornado is still unlikely — based on historical data, there’s only a 30 percent chance a tornado of any strength touches Boone County in a given year — Boone County’s tornado catastrophe risk is rising in another way.

“There has been a rapid growth in population and housing in the planning area in recent years,” the report says. “A larger population and more extensive built environment increase the risk of injury, loss of life, and damage from tornadoes.”

It’s not the tornado itself that’s a disaster, but rather the damage inflicted on the community. The more entwined the community, the more damaging the disaster. Martina Pounds, public information officer for the Boone County Fire Protection District, helps design business continuity plans: ways for businesses to recover as quickly as possible and relink their economic chain in the community.

“In a disaster, the economic impact is high, and we want to minimize that,” Pounds says. “Sometimes what devastates communities the most is businesses not being able to open back up.”

When businesses can’t open, the services they provide are gone. Then another business might become less effective, creating a domino effect. Say, for example, that a trucking company is untouched by the disaster, but a handful of suppliers can’t reopen business. Then the trucking company wouldn’t haul enough cargo to be profitable, and then it wouldn’t be able to operate. After that, the trucking company’s other clients — previously two steps removed from the hypothetical disaster — have no one to ship their goods, and so on.

The recovery hurdle seems higher to small businesses. With a thinner portfolio of resources (lacking the employees and money to spend time developing a comprehensive continuation plan), discernment is key. To foster efficiency in planning, Pounds has businesses conduct a self-interview. What is my risk? What do I need to do business? Do I have what I need to recover documents and data? (See sidebar for more on preparing for disaster.)

“Find out what you’re vulnerable to: tornadoes, flooding, windstorms, storms in general,” Pounds says. “Your risk assessment plan just says ‘what is my risk and how do I prepare for it?’”

The preparation then requires communication: first to employees, then to your neighbors. Matching plans with other businesses can ease the recovery process, especially for businesses working in close proximity, like in a shopping center. Owners can share resources and learn from other continuation plans.

Big companies are easy for Pounds. They readily adopt continuation plans; it’s easier for them to do so, with more employees and more access to different resources. She interacts with small businesses less because they’re harder to find, like a surgeon has an easier time with an appendectomy than a neurosurgery.

“[Small businesses] are really the backbone of the community. They think they aren’t a part of that, but they are. And the more prepared you are, the less economic impact on the community.”

The days after a disaster can be unpredictable. Pounds diplomatically described why businesses should, as she put it, “protect your assets,” because “when a building has no security, you know, people have access to things.”

In simpler terms: prepare against looting. Secure supplies needed to do business. Make contact with suppliers (a few of which, Pounds says, should be non-local) and your most important customers.

“Talk to your insurance company,” Pounds says. “They’re usually a great resource for recovery, because it’s in their best interest, too — to get their investment back as soon as possible.”

Columbia Insurance Group, or some earlier iteration of the company, has moved headquarters all around Missouri. Their first policy was issued in Columbia, but then the company moved to Rock Port in 1889; after relocating back to Columbia, headquarters was on Ninth Street, then Hitt, then Business Loop 70. In 1975, they moved into an old shopping mall off Paris Road, where they still operate. From there, they’ve stretched tendrils into most of the Midwest and the South.

In the company’s embryonic stage, it was the Missouri Farmers Mutual Tornado, Cyclone and Windstorm Insurance Company. While their location has changed, Boone County’s big risk hasn’t.

“A tornado is still probably the big one here,” says Brian Callahan, quality control coordinator in the corporate claims division at CIG. In the seat next to him, VP of Claims Michael LeBlanc nods his head. LeBlanc only moved to Columbia a couple weeks before, having spent the previous five years at CIG’s Atlanta branch, but he’s familiar with Missouri.

Both men remember when, four years ago, an EF5 tornado struck Joplin. Humanitarian concerns aside, that tornado imposed business problems for CIG in policy and practice: While hearing claims and estimating damage, CIG’s area agents were sorting their own business’s chaos. The biggest challenge wasn’t about insurance; it was about, in the simplest sense, doing business.

“We learned a lot from the tornado in Joplin just from talking with our agents down there,” Callahan says. “Their buildings got directly hit. When it happens in your town, and your building is gone, and here comes your customer saying, ‘I need help.’ You’re saying, ‘Hold on a minute. Where’s your record?’”

Technology management is pivotal in a disaster. If done correctly, it can carry a business through recovery, but if used incorrectly, it hampers a business’s chances of ever coming back. Backing up files, preferably at a far-away site, becomes critical. A lot of employees can work from home, LeBlanc says, but that doesn’t help if all of their company’s data vanishes when a tornado knocks out their infrastructure.

Other precautions are more tangible. “Keep your electronics charged,” Callahan says. “Lock your file cabinets. That was a big one in Joplin. File cabinets were flying everywhere.”

In the summer of 2015, CIG ran an article called “The Upside to Disaster” in their company’s internal publication, The Flag. It’s a best practice handbook for CIG agents, “to ensure the scales tip toward success” in a disaster. Callahan is quoted in the article, saying, “Agencies need to be proactive in helping out their clients in order to expedite the claims process after a storm.”

Callahan elaborates in person: “You have to make a plan, and you should test it at least once a year. One to three times a year. It’s just like when you were growing up: if a tornado hits, what do you do? Oh, we go three doors down for shelter. It’s the same thing for businesses.”

He’s describing some of the continuity plans that Martina Pounds designs, and CIG makes sure they have one in place. In a disaster, insurance companies have an obligation to recover quickly. CIG tells agents to become operational as soon as possible, and then start assessing claims.

“The first thing we try to do is make sure no one is hurt,” LeBlanc says. “After that, we start working with local contractors, making inventory lists, estimating damage, that sort of thing.”

Toward the end of their interview, both Callahan and LeBlanc shrug at a question: Given that a disaster is unlikely to happen, how do you communicate the value of disaster preparedness?

“Well yeah, it’s not happening today, but that’s the whole idea of buying insurance,” Callahan says. “That’s the idea with this. We have to be ready before something’s happened, because after it happens, it’s already too late.”

A week after the 1917 tornado, Boone County was recovering. A fleet of Columbia doctors went to care for the injured. Some victims, including Roy Douglas, died at the hospital, but others recovered. The city held fundraising events for the relief committee, including a special screening of “The Dummy,” starring the rising actor Jack Pickford, at the Columbia Theater. By June 12, $2,600 in donations had come in: nearly $50,000 in 2015 dollars. A good chunk of that came from businesses: the Hamilton Brown Shoe Factory donated $15, the Barth Clothing Company donated $25, the Parker Furniture Company donated $150. Their philosophy resonates as well in 2015 as in 1917. After a disaster, the business community recovers together.

Note: This article owes thanks to reporting from the Daily Missourian, which covered the 1917 Boone County Tornado with astounding detail. 

 

Continuity tips

No business wants to deal with a disaster, but it’s important to have a plan in place. In the unlikely event of a catastrophe, preparedness can mean the difference between coming back quickly and not coming back at all. Here are five tips from conversations with the Boone County Fire Protection District’s Martina Pounds.

• Ask yourself the tough questions. What do I need to do business? Who are my most important customers? Who are my essential employees? What disasters am I particularly vulnerable to? Being prepared begins with knowing your soft spots. Focus on what you need and how you’ll keep it safe.
• Spread out. Consider keeping your data stored offsite, even out of town. Have a widespread supplier network. Make your data accessible for employees working at home. Even if a disaster strikes, some of your infrastructure will stay in place.
• Protect your property. Make sure all your doors, windows, filing cabinets, etc., are locked. Take photos of your business and take as much inventory as possible. It will be important to know what you need to recover.
• Be a good neighbor. Talk with fellow business owners about their continuation plans and see if you can coordinate with each other. Get all surrounding businesses on the same page. Talk with your insurance agent as soon as possible. This will help all of you recover more quickly and efficiently.
• Don’t underestimate yourself. Every business, no matter how small, plays a part in the economy. Don’t think that disaster preparedness is only for big companies; everyone has customers counting on them to be ready and able to bounce back.