Disaster Recovery Journal Fall 2025

Our country also faces a large growth in natural disasters too. The National Oceanographic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) office of National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) released a report on natural disas ters in 2023. According to the report, the US experienced 28 weather and climate disasters in 2023. That surpassed the pre vious record of 22 events in 2020. The cost of these disasters in 2023 amounted to $92.9 billion in property damages and 492 deaths. The PEW Research Center did a study on natural disasters which mirrored the NOAA study. They saw a significant increase in the number and cost of disas ters in the United States over the past two decades. There were more than $96 billion in US disasters, costing a total of $546.3 billion from 1883 to 2002. The nation had 244 disasters from 2003 to 2022, costing more than $1.95 trillion during that period. The PEW study shows a 154% increase in numbers and 257% increase in costs between reporting periods. Organizations can no longer count on natural disasters as “once in a career event.” How should organizations prepare for the future? Technology and programs will help you prepare but they are not magic bullets. The magic bullet now and always rests with people. Organizations need to find, train, and keep the right people to survive the future. The past gives us many examples of where this principle becomes the difference between success or failure. I realize just saying that line is easier than implementing it. The current eco nomic environment companies face casts a long image of uncertainty. Organizations, almost out of habit when faced with risk and uncertainty, dig a hole and dive in. Those who don’t fit into the hole fall victim to mass layoffs. Various news sources today run stories indicating how the future doesn’t seem bright. President Trump has raised tariffs on multiple countries to varying degrees across the globe. CNBC recently quoted a NY Federal Reserve Board study which showed 77% of surveyed companies have seen a recent increase in costs. US Law (Worker Adjustment and Retraining

Notification Act (WARN) requires compa nies must send out layoff warning notices to local government and affected workers. According to Newsweek, June 2, 2025, nearly 160 companies expected large lay offs in June, exceeding the 135 companies which start layoffs in May. All companies implement reduction plans differently. Through the barrage of layoffs, one can see certain trends. Organizations will seek to eliminate cer tain products or programs. They change organizational culture to a more restric tive one. Management just levels arbitrary cuts, like everyone takes the same percent age cut in the workforce across the whole organization. Often support or specialty staff, like the continuity person, get cut on the first pass since their product isn’t seen by the masses or generates income. To explain away this shortfall in capac ity management creates a mysterious box on the PowerPoint work flow chart. That mysterious box covers some untested process, the act of contracting out or new untested technology. Managers just say the forces in this new box in the work flow chart will fix our shortfalls. No one asks just how that fix works. It just sounds so sweet in the briefings and annual reports no one asks questions. An example of this mysterious box tool lies with the federal government. Supporters of the current structure change

say a more aggressive use of automation and artificial intelligence will save the day. However, those ideas forget the most important part of organizations, people. People in critical spots at the right time make the difference between success and failure for organizations. Software and plans just repeat how they were programed ill regardless of circumstances. First, people do what software can’t. I think the following quote about war from Carl von Clausewitz, a Prussian general and military theorist, properly describes what I am talking about in a disaster: The chaos of an emergency environ ment and lack of information makes anything difficult. People can gather information from multiple new sources to understand the dynamics of the environ ment in a disaster. When organizations face emergencies with no critical staff all they have is a plan written by contractors or AI. The plan someone or thing wrote back home when the weather was nice and everything worked. Also, that picture then always seems much rosier than you expe rience when sitting in the office with a leak and no power. The answer to this uptick on risks lies with people. The continuity person in an organization must bring clear value to “Everything in war is very simple. But the simplest thing is difficult.”

30 DISASTER RECOVERY JOURNAL | FALL 2025