Boost Business Resilience: Training For Disaster Recovery

Missoula, MT (KGVO-AM News) - Have you ever thought about how you would operate your company or your business during a disaster or an emergency situation?

Training for that eventuality is available for any business or organization through FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency).

I spoke with Adriane Beck, Missoula County Director of Disaster and Emergency Services about specialized training focused on helping you operate or maintain your business, even during an emergency.

FEMA has a new Education Course for Business Owners and Operators

“The Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA has a course called L1301,” began Beck. “It's a continuity planning course, and it's designed for anyone who has important time sensitive work that they do every day and helping them think through how they would do that amid any kind of disruption, whether that's a power outage, all of a sudden for whatever reason, they can’t occupy their building, that they do their business due to water, sewer disruptions, and really walking them through the steps of how they plan for that and how they can continue to provide the services that they do, amid those disruptions.”

Business operators will learn specific skills that will help them keep their companies operational, even after a disaster.

Those Attending will Receive Training for Their Specific Businesses

“Courses such as this one will take you through a formal continuity planning exercise for your specific business,” she said. “They provide excellent templates to help guide those thought processes, as well as at the end hopefully facilitate you creating not only personal continuity plans for their home life, but for their businesses as well. At the end of the day, the more resilient we can make all of the sectors of our community, the better off we all will be.”

Beck said the training will help business operators specifically address the problems they would face in an emergency or disaster situation.

Attendees will Learn Specific Skills to Handle an Emergency of Disaster

“It's a matter of paying attention to and analyzing what you're most susceptible to,” she said. “Obviously, as you point out, we spend most of our time trying to provide that information to individuals and businesses so that they can do their own risk assessments based on the environment they're in, and then hopefully providing strategies and tools for people to ask their own. ‘Well, what if this happened, how is that going to impact me?’ and then thinking about those things ahead of time so that when something does happen, you've already gone through that exercise.”

Beck then shared with me the contact information for those interested in the emergency training, which will take place at Fort Harrison in Helena.

“You can contact Montana Disaster and Emergency Services, you can go to their website here, and you can look at the training that's being offered," Beck said. "You can also contact our office, or you can contact me directly here. I would be happy to direct you with a training that might be appropriate for you.”

The courses will be held on May 29-30; August 7-8 and Nov 13-14.