For businesses in St. Louis, Missouri, being prepared for any and all eventualities is the smart thing to do. While Saint Louis isn’t normally known for being the center of a disaster zone, it still has a possibility of severe weather events and other happenings that could disrupt your Missouri business. This doesn’t include the issue of potential cyberattacks. Being prepared with business continuity and disaster recovery in St. Louis is essential for every small, medium, and large business.
Potential Disasters That Could Impact St. Louis Businesses
St. Louis, Missouri has had its fair share of major disasters, including:
St. Louis Disaster Recovery for Earthquakes?
Did you know that St. Louis, MO is located near a major fault line? When we think of earthquakes, we typically think of Los Angeles and San Francisco and the San Andreas Fault in California. But business continuity and disaster recovery in St. Louis should include earthquake planning.
Why? The city of St. Louis, MO, is very vulnerable to a massive earthquake. This is because there is a humongous fault line called the New Madrid Fault that runs through Missouri. The New Madrid Fault is actually a full-blown seismic zone, which is a series of faults in the earth’s crust that are called the Realfoot Rift.
Does your St. Louis disaster recovery plan include this possibility? A series of earthquakes hit the New Madrid fault zone in 1811 and 1812, with the largest being an enormous temblor on February 7th, 1812, which is estimated to have been between 7.4 and 8.0 on the Richter scale. This superquake was felt as far away as Washington D.C., where church bells were ringing in response. The town of New Madrid, Missouri was totally wiped out, the Mississippi River flowed backwards.
Saint Louis was impacted greatly by the quake, where many homes and structures were severely damaged. As we can imagine, business continuity and disaster recovery would have been very helpful to these St. Louis businesses.
St. Louis Disaster Recovery for Severe Weather?
Severe thunderstorms and tornadoes are also not unknown to St. Louis residents and businesses. One of the worst tornadoes in St. Louis occurred in 1896, when a massive cyclone killed more than 250 people and left another 185 missing. More than 8,800 homes and businesses in and around St. Louis were damaged or rubbled. Steamboats even sank along the Mississippi.
St. Louis Disaster Recovery for Fires?
Fires have also been a problem for St. Louis businesses. The great Fire of 1849 started off as a fire on a single steamboat along the St. Louis riverfront. The flames spread to other steamboats and then jumped to the docks. Then, the conflagration ate up warehouses along the Mississippi River.
In order to stop the fire, firefighters actually blew up six whole buildings. (Unfortunately, one fireman was killed as he was laying gunpowder in one of the buildings designated for explosion.) Fifteen city blocks were destroyed, including the majority of the St. Louis commercial district along the riverfront.
Without the right business continuity and disaster recovery plans, these St. Louis businesses probably never recovered.
St. Louis Disaster Recovery for Pandemics?
Of course, we’re all well aware of the impact of the COVID pandemic on Saint Louis businesses, but it’s not the first disease disaster. There was a cholera epidemic in 1849 that killed almost 10% of the Saint Louis population.
St. Louis Disaster Recovery for Cyberattacks?
You can add to that above list of potential disasters the modern threat of St. Louis cyberattacks and ransomware. In fact, in 2020, a Missouri county website withstood a major cyberattack via Trojan horse malware. Fortunately, it was thwarted, but these sorts of cyberattacks have been increasing.
Planning Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery in St. Louis
Business continuity planning is all about setting up structures and policies to enable a business to continue operating after a major event or disaster. Disaster recovery is more specifically about recovering from the actual disaster itself. Both of these are important for St. Louis businesses in order to continue on with the challenging landscape of the 2020s.
Your St. Louis business should have business continuity and disaster recovery plans in place. Don’t wait until the last minute. For example, while the odds aren’t likely, the New Madrid Fault could go off at any moment without any warning.
Need Help With Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery in St. Louis?
CDs Office Technologies provides expert consultation and services surrounding business continuity and disaster recovery in St. Louis. Our expertise ranges from rebuilding networks after a disaster to preventing and remediating malware. Secure cloud data storage means your data is safe even if your local office undergoes a disaster. With our Managed IT solutions, we can assess your networks and data storage solutions to come up with secure redundant systems that can withstand natural disasters and worse.
CDS Office Technologies is a leading provider of Managed IT services for small businesses, large businesses, nonprofit organizations, and government agencies in Missouri. If you would like help with business continuity and disaster recovery in St. Louis, please contact us for a consultation.
