Emergency Management: Prepared for Your Business
Published on Monday, 30 April 2012 12:12 | 
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Helpful insights shared at St. Johnsbury Chamber of Commerce-sponsored business workshop.
By Mike Welch, NCIC
“The most important thing that I can tell you is that you need to listen to local emergency management officials—it is not a question of ‘if’ it is going to happen, it is a question of ‘when’ it is going to happen,” St. Johnsbury Fire Chief Troy Ruggles told a group of local businesses owners and employees at the Emergency Preparedness Workshop, hosted by the St. Johnsbury Chamber of Commerce on March 20. Chief Ruggles said that local officials have been talking about the importance of emergency preparedness for years—but now following the “phenomenal destruction” of Irene, “people are starting to pay attention.”
Chief Ruggles and Bruce Melendy, Emergency Management Coordinator for Northern Vermont Development Association, stressed the importance of emergency-preparedness planning for your business. Chief Ruggles said that your business may not receive direct damage—but regional disasters can wipe out roads, cause power outages, interfere with communication services, and make it impossible for your employees to get to work—any one of these occurrences will have an adverse impact on your business.
According to Ruggles and Melendy, the most common emergencies in Vermont are Flood, Fires, and Power Outages. “You need to look at your vulnerability from a business standpoint.”
Ruggles said that the rule of thumb used to be that you should plan to be able to take care of yourself, without any outside assistance, for 24 hours, “but today, you need to be fully prepared to do whatever you need to do for 72 hours.” Ruggles said that there is a misconception that FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) and VEMA (Vermont Emergency Management Agency) will sweep in immediately and solve all of the problems.
Employee safety is one of the primary considerations of an emergency management plan. Take care of your people. Do you have a way to reach all of your employees in the event of an emergency? If an emergency happens at your place of business do you have a system in place to identify those employees who are at work, employees who may be out on the road, or out sick, or on vacation – so that you are able to help local officials account for all of your employees in an emergency. Do you have an up-to-date employee roster, with emergency contact information? Melendy suggested that companies should consider asking employees to update emergency contact information annually.
Ruggles said that in a disaster, local emergency services need to prioritize calls for service – so that the life-threatening calls take precedence. Ruggles stressed the importance of working to figure out “how we are going to take care of ourselves.” An important part of taking care of ourselves, means making sure we have a plan in place to take care of our families. Ruggles and Melendy stressed that if your presence is required at your business to take care of an emergency—you need to make sure that you also have an emergency plan in place for your family members—so that you can focus on dealing with the business.
Ruggles suggested that to begin the process of emergency management planning for your business you should indentify all potential emergencies through a “risk assessment.” Each situation should be ranked as “high risk/low frequency, high risk/high frequency, low risk/low frequency, or low risk/high frequency.” Ruggles said the place to start with your emergency plan are with those items that are identified as a “high risk to your business, but occur with a low frequency.” Ruggles added that these are the types of situations that can cause a lot of damage, but you do not have a lot of experience dealing with them, due to the fact that the events do not occur very often.
Once a plan has been developed you need to train with it, practice the procedures that you have identified in your plan, make sure all employees are aware of the plan – and then annually review the plan and make necessary updates.
Jim Goodrich, Compusys2000, informed business representatives that they “need to plan, implement, and audit.” Goodrich stated that all businesses should have a back-up plan, or multi-layered back-up plan for their technology services. Goodrich said that “you need to audit your back-up systems, to make certain that you can restore the information from the back-up. Audits are as critical as the plan itself.” Goodrich recommended that business owners schedule an appointment with their insurance representative to “go over the fine print” and make sure that you understand what is and is not covered in the event of an emergency – particularly related to your information technology systems.
Goodrich, Ruggles, and Melendy said that there are good templates for emergency planning that can be found through FEMA www.fema.gov , and at Vermont Emergency Management http://vem.vermont.gov/ .
Bruce Melendy and Chief Troy Ruggles are both willing to come to your place of business and assist you in review, or development, of an emergency plan. Melendy can be reached via e-mail at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. "> This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or at 802-748-5181. Chief Ruggles can be reached via e-mail
at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. "> This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , or by calling 802-748-8925.
Mike Welch, the former Town Manager of St. Johnsbury, works for the Northern Community Investment Corporation in St. Johnsbury.
The two restaurants at the Creamery Shoppes in St. Johnsbury at Route 5 and Hastings Hill Road have fresh new ownership and a fresh new look. Mike and Laura Heath are the new owners of Ramunto’s Brick Oven Pizza. The Bagel Depot is back in business after a few months’ absence with new owners Jeremy Bressette and Jocelyn Poginy at the helm. Both restaurants are great additions to the local eating scene, with energetic young owners who love what they do.
freshening the look. The menu includes a wide variety of freshly-made bagels and bagel sandwiches, as well as some new items as omelettes, Belgian waffles, and other specialty sandwiches and salads. A second cash register helps to speed traffic flow during the rush times. “We really try to listen to our customers,” says Bressette. “We want to offer what they want to eat.”
Mike and Laura Heath of Ramunto’s are new to the restaurant business, but they already know the secret to making a great pizza. “We use the best ingredients we can get,” says Mike. “One hundred percent low-moisture mozzarella cheese, dough made from scratch every day – that’s how we make our pizzas even better than they were before.” The Heaths have experienced employees on staff, and benefit from the fact that Ramunto’s is a small Vermont and New Hampshire-based chain of restaurants. “We’ll take good ideas from all the other Ramunto’s locations and use the best of them here.”
Saturday, 11:00 am - 10:00 pm; and Sunday, 12:00 noon - 8:00 pm. Treat yourself to a meal at each of these spots and enjoy the great taste in St. Johnsbury’s restaurant community!
The Northeastern Vermont Development Association is presenting a seminar for businesspeople entitled, “Listening to Your Business,” Thursday, September 16, 2010, from 6:00 pm to 10:00 pm at NVDA’s offices at 36 Eastern Avenue in St. Johnsbury, Vermont. Led by Ross Hart, Vermont Small Business Development Center Advisor, the workshop will help you evaluate and measure your personal as well as business strategies.
Retail streets change all the time. St. Johnsbury’s own Eastern Avenue houses a wide variety of stores and businesses, from brokerage firms CitiFinancial and A.G. Edwards at the top of the hill, to clothing shops Elizabeth’s Large Size Fashions and Sunshine Boutique down at the bottom of the slope. And in between, there are lots of new things happening – businesses changing hands, new shops and services, stores moving. Let’s take a little stroll up Eastern Avenue…
storefront so she could add more to her business. As the name suggests, Carolyn makes clothing repairs and alterations. She also handles high-end ladies’ resale clothing – “not consignment,” she is quick to mention. Her latest line of business is doing custom reupholstered furniture and custom slipcovers. She also sells home decorating fabrics that Carolyn says are not available anywhere else in the area.
Walking up the street a block or so brings you to a new beauty salon, called Fusion 134. The shop brings together four of the area’s stylists under one roof. Stephen Donna and Angela Hurlbert opened the salon in July, and in October, Suzanne Geoffroy and Lorie Achilles joined them. They handle haircuts, styling, perms, coloring, and nails. According to Suzanne, the response from customers has been great. “We think this is the perfect location for us,” says Suzanne. “We don’t feel new anymore. We feel like we belong here.”
A new owner – Marc LaRose, who is also Assistant Chief of St. Johnsbury’s Fire Department. Marc and his wife Diane own the building, and bought the All About Flowers business from Lallie Mambourg and Sandy Lazerick in October. But the people who create those beautiful flower arrangements are the same, according to Sandy. She and Jessie Stevenson, Marcia Pettigrew, and Ellen Gonyaw staff the shop and provide it with the same level of service they have been proud to offer. “We’re really building our wedding business,” says Jessie, “and we’re improving our website as well.”
All this activity, and we've just walked up ONE side of the street (right-hand side, as you're walking uphill)! Go ahead and stroll up or down Eastern Avenue and discover for yourself what's new there!
Kennedy’s Jewelers is back in business in St. Johnsbury, just a few doors down the street from its old location. The store was one of several businesses affected by the tragic fire that took place July 9, 2009 and devastated two buildings on Main Street that housed three businesses and a number of people who lived in apartments on the second and third floors.
