What Massive Storms, Human Error, and Broadband Gaps Teach Us About Business Resilience

On February 10th, 2024 a fast-moving East-Coast nor’easter slammed a destructive path from Louisiana all the way to Maine, dropping heavy snow, cutting power to over 176,000 customers, and disrupting hundreds of flights before going offshore on the 13th. Yet many retailers and medical offices stayed open by flipping their networks to LTE hotspots, spinning up cloud phone systems, and working from pre-distributed “snow day” playbooks. Their secret wasn’t luck; it was a living continuity plan tested every quarter.

That storm is just one reminder that today, the question isn’t will your company be disrupted, but how often—and how quickly you’ll bounce back. Below are six real-world examples, from Vermont floods to Florida hurricanes, that show how an “immune-system” approach to culture, people, process, tech hygiene, and outside expertise keeps business humming when the unexpected hits.

The Six-Layer “Immune System” for Business Resilience

We like to compare resilience to the immune system: the stronger your everyday habits, the faster you recover. Here’s how smart, prepared companies harden that system—and how you can, too.

1. Culture & Leadership

When the Winooski River jumped its banks in July 2023, more than 140 businesses in downtown Montpelier were swamped, racking up $20 million in damages. Within 48 hours, store owners formed a sidewalk “bucket brigade” to clear mud, logged damages in a shared Google Sheet, and met nightly at City Hall to allocate generators. That grassroots coordination worked because merchants had practiced a flood-evacuation walk-through each spring after 2011’s Tropical Storm Irene.

Takeaways

• Make tabletop drills and nightly debriefs part of the culture before a disaster strikes; the habit lets leaders pivot from value-creation to value-protection in minutes.
• Schedule quarterly “what-if” meetings, empower employees to flag weak spots, and practice role-switch drills every year. Culture is the reflex that snaps into action when things go sideways.

2. People Training

A 2023 ransomware attack forced several Connecticut hospitals to run on paper charts for two weeks, diverting some ER patients in the process. Staff kept care flowing because they rehearse an annual “EHR-down” day that includes handwritten order sets and walkie-talkie dispatch. Clinicians who stumble in the drill attend a 15-minute refresher the same week.

Takeaways

• Short, scenario-specific refreshers—whether phishing click tests or manual-process drills—beat refresher-only approaches and keep employees calm when screens go dark.
• Quarterly drills beat annual slide decks!

3. Process Redundancy

Historic rains from the remnants of Hurricane Helene swamped western North Carolina in September 2024, closing mountain roads and washing out a key rail spur. A regional furniture maker avoided layoffs by switching to an alternate supplier in Tennessee that it had pre-qualified after 2021’s Ida washouts. Raw-material costs were higher, but production never stopped.

Takeaways

• For every mission-critical input, keep at least one geographically distant vendor under contract and test that relationship yearly.
• Ask “What’s Plan B? Plan C?”
• Cross-train staff. Redundancy feels inefficient—until the day it saves the quarter.

4. Technology Hygiene

During January 2022’s blizzard, wind gusts near 80 mph knocked out power to 120,000 Massachusetts customers. One Hyannis retailer stayed open because its point-of-sale tablets could hop to a battery-backed LTE hotspot, and nightly data backups were already in the cloud. No data, no sales, no problem.

Takeaways

• Maintain at least one non-cable internet path (LTE, satellite, or second ISP).
• Enforce MFA, store daily encrypted backups off-site, maintain a second internet path, and patch within seven days. Attackers exploit defaults and slow updates, not Hollywood hacks.

5. External Expertise

When ransomware hit Colonial Pipeline in May 2021, the company shut down 5,500 miles of pipeline that move 45 % of the East Coast’s fuel supply. Within hours, management hired incident-response giant Mandiant and other outside specialists to lead forensics, containment, and secure restoration. Working alongside federal agencies, the external team helped Colonial restart fuel flows in just six days, and their guidance supported the FBI in clawing back $2.3 million of the ransom payment.

Takeaways

• Hourly “break-fix” IT leaves gaps.
• A managed service provider (or fractional CISO) delivers constant eyes, runbooks, and threat intel impossible to staff solo.
• Outsourcing isn’t a cost; it’s an insurance policy with a proactive pit crew.

6. One Last Example: Why “Extreme” Preparedness Is Warranted

When Hurricane Ian made landfall near Fort Myers on September 28th, 2022, storm surge and 150 mph winds knocked out power to over 2.6 million customers and flooded dozens of healthcare facilities.

Despite this, some southwest Florida urgent care networks reopened within 24 hours because their continuity plans automatically switched over electronic-health-record (EHR) to servers outside the Orlando-based cloud region. Switching Wi-Fi routers to battery-backed LTE hotspots, and dispatching portable generators from pre-arranged logistics partners (and those already installed) made such a recovery possible.

Front-desk staff processed patients on tablets, while clinicians accessed cloud EHRs through a secure browser—no data loss, no billing backlog, and no need to divert storm-related injuries to already-crowded hospitals.

Takeaways

• Pre-staging critical gear—generators, fuel, and LTE hotspots—outside the probable impact zone can preserve their efficacy in the worst-case disasters.
• Set up redundant backup cloud regions outside your region so core apps can keep running even when local data centers get flooded.
• In some industries, redundancy is a matter of life and death. Especially in healthcare, these precautions are essential, even priceless.

Action Steps: For Your SMB’s IT Resilience

1.     Pick one weak spot per layer.
Culture – Book a 30-minute what-if drill for next week.
People – Send a five-minute phishing test before month-end.
Process – List single-source vendors; find at least one backup.
Tech – Turn on MFA for email and cloud apps today.
Expertise – Interview an MSP or fractional security partner this quarter.

2.     Put each task on the calendar with a real owner and deadline.

3.     Test, debrief, repeat. After the first mini-drill, hold a 15-minute recap. Fix what felt clunky and run it again. Muscle memory beats PowerPoints!

The name of the game is shifting from value creation to value protection before the storm hits. That mindset—planning, practicing, and improving—keeps businesses humming through black-ice roads and broadband brownouts. It will do the same for you.

The Bottom Line

Resilience isn’t necessarily expensive or complicated—it’s a series of small habits done on repeat. Want an outside opinion on your weakest layer? Contact Us to start future-proofing your business today.