We weren’t planning on doing a second episode of the podcast this week, having just published an episode about National Preparedness Month earlier in the day on September 5th.  However, the extraordinary event that is Hurricane Irma led to Bryan and Jen sitting in the studio later that afternoon to record this episode.

What do you do when a Hurricane is headed towards your home or the business you’ve been charged to protect? Bryghtpath Principal & CEO Bryan Strawser and Senior Consultant Jen Otremba discuss their more than twenty years of combined hurricane crisis management experience in this episode of the Managing Uncertainty Podcast.

Topics discussed include personal and family preparedness, acting as a single source of truth, the need for public/private partnerships, preparedness steps for your business, where to go find information, and the real challenge with hurricanes coming after the storm has passed.

Click here for more information on Bryghtpath’s Hurricane Crisis Management Services and how we can help your organization weather the coming storm.

 

Episode Transcript

 

Bryan Strawser:                   Welcome to a special edition of the Managing Uncertainty podcast. Special because we just released an episode this morning about National Preparedness Month, and because we’ve spent the last … I don’t know, Jen, 10-ish days-

Jen Otremba:                        Or so.

Bryan Strawser:                   Working on hurricane Harvey for a number of clients in the Texas area, where we’ve helped them manage preparedness response and now we’re really kind of in the longterm recovery stage for the businesses. They’ve all reopened, for our clients anyway. There’s other businesses. Now we’ve got another problem.

Jen Otremba:                        Yeah, hurricane Irma’s on her way.

Bryan Strawser:                   Here comes Irma.

Jen Otremba:                        Yes.

Bryan Strawser:                   As we’re recording this, and we’re recording this on Tuesday, September 5th-

Jen Otremba:                        Late afternoon.

Bryan Strawser:                   In the late afternoon.

Jen Otremba:                        End of business day, even.

Bryan Strawser:                   Hurricane Irma is now a Category 5 hurricane, it’s 180 miles to the east of Antigua. It’s expected to make landfall, or right now, I guess, parallel along the land of the leeward islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and Cuba, and at some point it’s going to make a northerly turn. We don’t know at this point if that’s going to be before Florida, over Florida, or in the Gulf of Mexico after Florida.

Jen Otremba:                        Or exact timing, really. We don’t know that yet.

Bryan Strawser:                   Or exact timing. But as we heard from NOA in the National Hurricane Center about two hours ago on a call, this is now the strongest hurricane in history in the Atlantic ocean. It’s insane.

Jen Otremba:                        Yeah, I don’t know if people realize how big that is. How absolutely massive this thing is.

Bryan Strawser:                   It’s moving at a hundred … I’m sorry, its wind is north of 185 miles an hour wind speed, plus it’s moving at, I think it was 14 miles an hour to the west, northwest.

Jen Otremba:                        Yeah, for all weather geeks like myself, I have the radar up, looking at this massive circle coming towards the continental United States.

Bryan Strawser:                   It’s huge.

Jen Otremba:                        Yeah.

Bryan Strawser:                   It’s huge.