Continuity
Systems Ltd 
Wellington, New Zealand - According to a statement, rats are confirmed to be
the cause of a telecommunications blackout which lasted for more than four hours
in New Zealand. The rats ate through cable crippling the
telecommunications services infrastructure, and leaving telephone, mobile, and
Internet services offline. Telecom New Zealand says the outages affected
about 100,000 customers, and led to the nation's stock exchange being closed for
most of the trading day.
According to the company, the rats ate through cable near Wellington, damaging a
service pipeline on the North Island. Unfortunately, within hours a power
company post-hole digger disabled another pipeline, causing the blackout.
Telecom New Zealand is looking into bringing charges against the power company
that took out their second pole, to help pay for the losses incurred by the
failure.( All Headline News, June 24, 2005)
Mere duplication of critical infrastructure may be insufficient - the rule in systems such as Air Traffic Control is 'Three primary plus one back-up'.
The Civil Contingencies Bill requires the Emergency Services to have Business Continuity Plans. The need for this was amply demonstrated by the flooding in Carlisle (8/1/05) affecting an area which the Environment Agency had very accurately predicted though they were able to provide little warning of its timing. The Police Station, the Fire Station and the Civic Centre were under several feet of water at the height of the flood, hampering their response. Fortunately over 900 years ago the builders of the Castle chose a higher site so the multi-agency response was masterminded from there by the Emergency Planning Unit. A week on the clean-up is progressing but there is concern about the impact on local businesses and the biscuit factory (known locally as Carr's - of Water (!) Biscuit fame) of the costs of the clean-up operation.
Does your Business Impact Assessment take into account how competitors would respond to your difficulties? Would they stand back and watch, would they help or would they see your distress as an opportunity to take your customers and even destroy you? After the Bishopsgate bomb, City insurers not affected by the incident did not to take advantage of the situation, though American insurers were less inhibited by the circumstances of this 'opportunity'. You need to understand how those around you would react to your misfortune to be able to assess 'Business Impact'.
Whilst not wanting to pass any judgement on the quality of the art destroyed in the east London warehouse where hundreds of works by leading British artists were stored, there are some useful lessons to be learnt about the issues of using multiple occupancy buildings. There were 34 units in the block converted from an old Chubb lock factory, which housed a variety of workshops including a carpenter, a car workshop, a cleaners ; mostly family run businesses. One larger unit belonged to a removal firm who, lacking goods to fill it, rented the space to Momart. Burglers raided a unit at the other end of the building containing reconditioned cordless phones and then set fire to it to cover their tracks. None of the units appeared to have working intrusion or fire monitoring systems and it was passers-by that raised the alarm. The fire spread quickly to all of the units completely destroying their contents and the many works of art in the Momart store. (May 24th 2004)
If you share premises with other companies have you any assurance about their level of monitoring and their response to a major incident. If you rent premises, does your landlord take these issues as seriously as you would like ; does he have plans to react to an emergency, minimise your loss and provide you with access at the earliest opportunity. Other issues that can occur in multiple occupancy buildings are conflicts over evacuation procedures and the frequency of testing.
Electricity supplies are slowly being restored in Italy, after the worst power failure in its history. Much of the capital, Rome, and the north of the country are now reconnected, and the south of Italy is also returning to normal. Only the island of Sardinia escaped the outage, which struck at about 0330 (0130GMT) on Sunday morning. About 110 trains were reported to have been brought to a standstill across the country - trapping more than 30,000 people. Water supplies were also affected and hospitals reported a spate of accidents involving elderly people. (BBC News Website)
There seems to be a spate of power outages afflicting the eastern US, parts of London, Copenhagen and now the whole of Italy. A business can usually cope with short, localised power outages through the use of generators for urgent systems. However a widespread and prolonged power outage causes impacts which are far harder to manage. Staff may be unable or unwilling to come to work through dark streets with no trains and no traffic lights. Where will they eat at lunchtime if cafes have closed. Will deliveries and collections continue to operate? The traditional BC response has been to relocate to alternative premises but with the loss of power over such a wide area, and transport disrupted this is not possible.
There are no obvious solutions but perhaps a re-evaluation of the 'maximum tolerable outage' of many business functions would be in order following actual experiences. In a widespread incident customers expectations are lower except for the necessities of life - thus enabling one to argue the case against the manager who insists on an unrealistic 'immediate' resumption of their operation under all circumstances.
To lose one (utility) is unfortunate, to lose three......
Phones on an industrial estate in Godalming, Surrey fell silent when a over-large lorry ripped down the telephone wires. The telecom company were quickly on the scene and set about digging a trench to lay replacement cables. Unfortunately in their enthusiasm they managed to crack the water main to the estate - so the water had to be turned off. Anxious to complete the job, the telephone contractors called in the water contractors who set about mending the water main by digging a trench around it. Unfortunately they fractured the gas main so the gas went off too!
Source: The Guardian
How could the ladies of the Knitting and Crochet Guild possibly offend anyone? Unfortunately 'Slipknot' is the title of their in-house magazine named after the first loop used to start off each new pattern. But it is also the name of a notorious, mask-wearing shock rock band who feature spitting and throwing-up in their performance in front of 'maggots' (their fans). The name overlap has led to abusive phone calls and a unpleasant e-mails to the Guild.
Perhaps your organisation's risk manager should keep an eye (or ear) on
the developments in rock music.
The results of this week's presidential elections in Mali won't be known for some time because the one and only person in possession of a rather important password has been in a car accident.
The computer technician involved in the crash has sole access to the PCs
carrying the tallied votes. He is recovering in hospital, but no one knows
when
he'll be up and about.
(From silicon.com)
An early lesson, though, is that initial coordination of the incident was hampered by the destruction of the city's emergency managmeent centre which was in the building. Perhaps a prestige location and a known terrorist target was not a good choice for a control centre though, of course, hindsight is a very exact science. No information has been forthcoming as to whether an alternative centre had been prepared.
The questions you should be asking are how close is your incident control centre to your main site? Is it likely to be caught up in the same incident or be included in a police cordon? This was the experience of Sun Alliance after the bomb in Manchester. Have you a fall-back plan, however rudimentary, to respond to such a situation?
For a account of the Business Continuity implications of the World Trade Centre collapse look in the published papers.
Historical statsitics are often used to provide guidance in assessing the risk of natural catastrophies. Though floods in Yorkshire and on the Severn are reasonably regular occurences, their severity and the unprecedented flooding in Sussex defied any statistical prediction.
Most recovery facility suppliers attempt to manage the risk of concurrent invocations by offering each client an exclusion zone around their property of about 400m within which they will not offer the same DR resources to another client. Though there is no evidence that any recovery service subscriber was turned away this time, it will be interesting to see how the DR companies respond to requests for cover from those who survived this year's events. Flooding within a single river basin could impact many businesses which, though they are separated by tens of miles, could be innundated within a day or two of each other. DR suppliers operating a 'first-come, first-served' policy could be deluged by 'precautionary invocations' by those lower down a river valley following flood warnings upstream.
A light aircraft that took off from Blackbushe airport near Yateley, Hants crashed into Linatex - a plastics and rubber components factory in Blackbushe, bursting through the aluminium front and skidding for about 25m before exploding with a blast that blew out the walls of the building. Clouds of poisonous fumes billowing from the building prompted the evacuation of local residents. Guardian 23rd Dec.2000
You might expect such power difficulties from a developing country but these long-running difficulties are in one of the most highly developed parts of the richest country in the world. Shares in UPS manufacturers might be a good bet but how many sets are capable of providing full power to a business over a long period. The power crisis in Aukland (see archive) showed that having your own power supply was not sufficient if other businesses on which you depend were less well prepared.
Of course, a shortage of fuel is not the only situation that can prevent travel so the impact of difficult travelling conditions on your recovery plans should be examined. Many plans seem to assume that, despite all the odds, on the day you need it all transport modes will be working smoothly to convey your staff to their alternative and often remote locations. Those who take the decision on the selection of recovery sites are often senior staff with company cars yet the majority of staff who will use the site are likely to be using a family car or public transport and may have tight timescales for family commitments such as collecting children from school. Recovery locations should be chosen at least in part by how easily they can be reached by staff from their home locations - ideally some staff should be closer to the back-up site that to their normal work location. There will always be a concern that an expensively maintained recovery site that is too far away will be useless when it is needed because too many staff are unable or unwilling to travel to it.
The distance between home and work should also be a consideration in the choice of key recovery staff - especially those concerned with handling the media response. One county EPO was unable to reach a meeting about the fuel crisis because he hadn't got petrol for the 120 mile round trip - perhaps that should prompt questions.
Whilst this incident was of short duration a chemical spillage on the A19 near Thornaby led to several weeks of road closure while the carcinogenic compound was cleaned off the road and out of streams. Though the police have to be informed of wide or slow moving vehicles there is no register of movements of chemical or radioactive loads so the emergency services tend to err on the side of caution in sizing exclusion zones until the exact nature of the danger can be determined.
Another explosion closed the M3 for hours as a propane tanker was involved in a collision on 6/3/00.
Have you checked that the nuclear warhead convoys between Berkshire, East Anglia and Scotland don't come close to your site?
Duplication, either by photocopying or some form of imaging, is the only way to ensure survival of vital documents and, of course, the copies must be kept physically separate from the originals.
Most businesses in the State of Victoria, Austrialia were left without gas following an explosion at Esso's Longford processing complex on September 25th as the limited remaining supplies were redirected to essential users. Gas started to flow again on October 4th, more than a week later. Hundreds of industrial users such as bakeries, cafes, car plants and paper mills were forced to take a week's holiday and other businesses relying on gas for heating had to try to find alternatives. Losses are estimated at A$55M per day and insurers are trying to dispel fears that they might not pay out because the state had redirected the gas supply.
In the UK this type of event could be even more serious since we rely heavily on gas-fired power stations at times of peak demand on the National Grid. The gas power stations are able to buy gas so cheaply, compared to coal, because they have signed 'interruptible' contracts with the gas suppliers. This means that if there is a shortage of gas, the supplier can terminate the supply to the power stations immediately, giving no time to bring other power sources on line. Coal-fired stations may take several hours to reach generating potential from 'cold' so prolonged power cuts are inevitable. Even if we ignore the environmental arguements of squandering gas on generating electricity, the policy of allowing the UK's electricity supply to be at the mercy of the other main power utility seems reckless. A peak load, or gas supply failure such as that experienced in Victoria, could leave us without either gas or electricity.
The failure of the PanAmSat's Galaxy IV satellite on 19th May at 6:13pm EDT shows how dependant we have become on satellite communication. The major impacts were:
As Aukland fumbled around in the dark for a solution to its electricity crisis, the power company, Mercury Energy, came up with an energy-saving idea likely to placate at least some in New Zealand's biggest city - two-and-a-half-hour lunch breaks.
The local Sunday Star-Times newspaper dismissed the idea. "For companies that have been struggling for nearly a month to cope with an erratic power supply, such belated advice reeks of telling granny how to suck eggs".
On February 22nd, four 20-year old power cables supplying Aukland failed plunging the CBD into darkness. Mercury Energy had laid off its own specialists to cut costs and therefore had to fly in engineers from Australia. Essential services have been kept going on emergency generators but even businesses with their own generators will have been hit hard by suppliers and services being without power.
As shops reopened on reduced power from two repaired cables and generators, Mercury Energy offered a compensation package of £30million for the losses which affected more than 8,500 businesses employing about 70,000 people as well as over 6,000 residents.
A similar incident in London was narrowly averted a few years ago by anti-terrorist investigations into a plot by the IRA to blow up a number of key electricity sub-stations simultaneously.
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