When put to the test, most business continuity plans fail to meet their basic minimum objectives (Devargas, 1999). This may be partly because such “emergency plans” are likely to have been a standard plan pulled off the internet so as to satisfy federal or local regulations.
Israel has just experienced over a month of indiscriminate bombarded by Katusha’s and long range high explosive rockets from Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon. The target has always been and continues to be Israel’s civilian population. The primary goal is to strike fear in the hearts of people, disrupt normal life and cripple the economy. Long term research into the adaptive behavior of people being terrorized and how small and corporate businesses have dealt with these issues, have long been part of Israel’s ongoing effort to find practical ways to ameliorate these damaging effects.
Was anyone really surprised by the results of recent household poll[1] in Hurricane prone areas that found “83 percent had taken no steps to fortify their homes this year, 68 percent had no hurricane survival kits and 60 percent had no family disaster plan”.
The recent report by the United States Homeland Security Secretary* detailing what happened (and did not happen) during Katrina would fit in nicely as another typical example in my book, Chaos Organization and Disaster Management (2003).
In recent days, Israel has been touched by avian flu with large numbers of poultry having to be destroyed. While the well-known solution to contain the spread of virus was apparent, the organizational mechanism involved had, in fact, been rehearsed many times before and during the Gulf War for a different kind of pandemic threat, namely the expected biochemical missile attack on Israeli citizens by Iraq.
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