Bracing for impact

By Emma Peterson. 

Get expert tips on building a disaster preparedness plan that will keep you and your people safe this hurricane season. 

In this episode of Roofing Road Trips®, Karen Edwards sat down with Chris Kane of Adams and Reese to discuss the ways in which contractors can prepare themselves for hurricanes and other severe weather events. 

 As a partner at Adams and Reese, Chris helps lead their disaster preparedness and recovery team, a role he has built knowledge and experience in since Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in 2005. The disaster relief following Katrina was a foundational experience and shaped where he took his work. He shared, “One of our colleagues here at the time really dove in. He was an economic development lawyer and a disaster recovery infrastructure lawyer, and he helped me understand this whole field of need and the importance of it. It became an opportunity at that point in my career.” 

As we look at the weather patterns and forecasts of the last few years, there is a distinct uptick in severe weather. Chris anticipates that this year will be a significantly active hurricane season, and contractors should be on high alert. The best thing to do to in case of these events is to create a business emergency and preparedness plan. He elaborated, “When an emergency happens and something traumatic occurs or you need to jump into action, if you have a plan in place, it's going to be easy to follow versus kind of winging it and following through with not a strategic process in place.” 

Building out one of these plans can seem intimidating, but it’s more simple than you might think. Chris explained, “The number one thing is make sure you have the ability to communicate and contact your people and understand where they're going and where they may be evacuating to and have a point of communication. That's the key biggest issue you see a lot in immediate disaster response, is a failure to communicate.” 

Once that has been established, the next step is getting your business back up. This is a key place for the construction industry to help individuals after disasters, Chris elaborated, “As part of a disaster recovery plan, and it may even be a side plan, a true business plan, but we work with clients on a regular basis with pre-positioning. This means pre-positioning yourself if a storm were to hit in an area to deliver your services to that area as immediately as possible.” 

Read the transcript or Listen to the podcast for more about hurricane preparedness plans and how to help your community recover in the aftermath.