Does Continuity Planning Only Involve Disasters?
I wish it were so. My first encounter with a disaster involving data was in the mid-1980s when I worked for a financial company. A fire on a lower floor of the large building did not cause water or smoke damage, but it did cause release of asbestos through the entire building. I lost several personal items, for which I was reimbursed by my employer’s insurance company. But I was out of work for several days before an alternate workspace location could be secured. And then we had to recreate data based on outdated backups. Not much fun. And in speaking with Kathryn Doyle at the California Genealogical Society and Library, I asked if the society lost any materials during the Great Quake of 1906, and if so, how they dealt with getting back into an “up and running” mode, as it were. “We lost our collection of 300 books (housed with the secretary of the society at the California Hotel which went up in smoke) in the 1906 earthquake and later advertised for donations across the country. The N
