Weathering Storms

Due to the typhoon that brought down heavy rain and strong winds in the wee hours of July 14, we lost electricity for almost 24 hours.  It wasn't as bad as Milenyo of 2006 which brought about more than 3 days of black out, but it's not the ordinary 1 to 3 hour brown outs we get every other time a storm passes by.

With our increased usage of technology for our company operations, from accounting and requisition to inventory and sales, and service tracking, our customer and product databases, as well as our everyday use of email, computers, fax, PBX, and mobile phones, we have become fearfully dependent so much on electricity that we get into a disorderly mess to put our operations back "online", if only on paper.

We have not been able to formally draft contingencies on brown out situations or other unusual circumstances for that matter.  Fortunately for us, we had a generator in our storage room, courtesy of last year's Ondoy.  We also had people who know how to use and wire them.  They just needed a little mobilization, and by late morning, just shortly after our PBX UPS gave up on our phone lines, we were running on diesel, and operating somewhat decently, albeit without email and mobile phones.

Moving forward, we should be planning ahead to prepare backup and redundant plans to keep our operations smooth and durable.  This means redundant internet services, backup servers, adequate supply stocking, and documentation.  We lasted a day without much hiccups.  Next time, we can do even better.