Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Florida's Widespread Blackouts

Early Tuesday afternoon, Florida was hit by severe power outages and widespread blackouts. The power outage has been blamed on a failed disconnect switch and equipment controlling voltage that had caught fire at an electrical substation near Miami. The blackouts spread from Miami to almost 300 miles north to Orlando and even 100 miles west into Tampa. The utility companies indicated that roughly 1 million customers were without power during the afternoon’s events. Estimates reported by emergency officials and local news affiliates stated nearly 3 million people were affected by the outages. Florida Power and Light recognized that approximately 8,000 locations still were still experiencing blackout conditions into the early evening hours, according to President Armando Olivera. Although power has subsequently been restored, disruptions to every day life of this magnitude come at great costs to many. These events are unanticipated and cannot be prepared for by many of those affected. Many businesses lose the ability to service customers, blank traffic lights can cause major traffic delays and accidents, and in some prolonged cases medical concerns for the elderly and disabled come into play.

One aspect every company needs to account for is their emergency preparedness plan. What will happen to your company when the power goes out, a fire, flood, etc.? Make sure you have the ability to forward your phones to MedCom in order to keep in contact with all your customers. Nothing is more important than letting your customers know you are always available to help them in any situation. Don’t let accidents or unforeseen events stop your company from continuing operations.

MedCom is a recognized leader in our industry. We are Call Center Certified (Gold Level) and we are active members of the Startel National Users Group. This certification helps ensure that we will be operational and available to take calls at least 99.99% of the time. At MedCom in keeping with our high operating standards, we maintain emergency backup systems including four 3.1 KVA battery backups (with continuous power conditioning), a 35 KVA emergency back-up generator, mirrored disk drives in each network server, and a fully redundant standby Startel switch. We are proud of our client relationships, our people, our products and services, and with the job that we do.

In addition to all the back up systems, batteries and generator, MedCom has taken operational precautions a step further. We have joined the Agility Recovery Solutions. In the event of any severe emergency, Agility provides MedCom with a mobile recovery solution. Agility will provide the means and supplies for MedCom to remain operational after a crisis—including office equipment, phone lines and Internet connectivity. MedCom has made efforts to go above and beyond the industry standards in order to maintain business continuity, key relationships, and peace of mind.

1 comment:

Kelly Goodwin said...

Great post! Many times businesses focus on the obvious events that would interrupt their ability to provide service to their customers, such as fire, flood and other natural disasters. Businesses often neglect to prepare for those rare events that can occur without warning and can last for a significant amout of time.