In this episode, Bryghtpath Principal & CEO Bryan Strawser and Senior Consultant Jen Otremba talk about personal preparedness and how it directly connects into business resiliency.

Together, Bryan and Jen talk through the four steps that you can take to improve your personal preparedness:

* Have a plan

* Get a kit

* Practice your Plan

* Review your Kit

You can learn more at our blog post on the same topic from last week.

Additional links:

* Ready Campaign – ready.gov

* National Preparedness Month

Episode Transcript

Bryan Strawser:                   So, every great story starts with a story, a lead, right?

Jen Otremba:                        Yeah.

Bryan Strawser:                   So, I’m from a small town in Indiana called Covington, whole 2,400 people and in 1979 we went through a tornado, I was five. My brother was maybe 18 months old. It went about a half mile, maybe a quarter mile from my home. We had pretty significant damage. I vividly remember, we didn’t have a basement so we ran to an interior closet with my mom and the dog.

Jen Otremba:                        Okay.

Bryan Strawser:                   And we’re hiding there and the storm comes through. My mom saw the funnel cloud, that’s what started all of this.

Jen Otremba:                        Oh, really?

Bryan Strawser:                   So, we’re hiding in the closet and then, you know, it passes by and then you go outside and you look at the aftermath of the storm. My city was without power for more than a week, actually I think it was closer to two weeks. We had trees down in the yard, we had a tree at a 45 degree angle leaning towards our house so we couldn’t sleep in our bedrooms because that’s what the tree was aimed at. We had to sleep on the floor in the living room with sleeping bags, which fortunately we had.

Jen Otremba:                        That’s kind of fun for kids.

Bryan Strawser:                   It’s kind of fun for kids, for my mom, not so much and my dad was out-of-town working because he was usually gone every other day.  We weren’t prepared to deal with this other than having sleeping bags and enough food for a couple days.

Jen Otremba:                        Yeah. So, on the flip side, I grew on a farm so we were used to kind of living without for periods of time because we weren’t very close to a grocery store, things like that. I also have few childhood memories of some major storms that came through.

Bryan Strawser:                   Mm-hmm (affirmative) Snow storms. Right?

Jen Otremba:                        And my mom waking us up in the middle of the night for tornado warnings, dragging us down into the basement.

Bryan Strawser:                   You had a well for water then?

Jen Otremba:                        We did.

Bryan Strawser:                   Okay.

Jen Otremba:                        Yeah, we did and we had a basement sort of cellar type of place that mom would drag all four of us down there in the middle of the night, terrified. Again, you’d walk outside, like you said, trees are everywhere.

Bryan Strawser:                   Could you get to the cellar from inside your house?

Jen Otremba:                        You could.

Bryan Strawser:                   Or you have to go outside and go through the wooden door?