The weekend storm in Tennessee has caused “Music City” to look like a series of small islands. The weekend storm claimed the lives of 28 people in the states of Tennessee, Kentucky and Mississippi. MSNBC reports officials fear the death toll may raise.
Flash floods caused thousands of residents and hotel guests to evacuate their homes. Also affected by the flood waters are the Country Music Hall of Fame and The Grand Ole Opry House as the Cumberland River rose 12 feet above flood stage.
MSNBC reports, “Though the rain stopped falling on Monday, the river continued to inch upward and authorities and volunteers in fishing boats, an amphibious tour bus and a canoe scooped up about 500 trapped vacationers at the Wyndham Resort along the river near Opryland.
“…Rescuers had to steer through a maze of underwater hazards including submerged cars, some with their tops barely visible above floodwaters the color of milk chocolate.”
Emergency shelters. There are seven shelters open across the city for folks who have been flooded out of their homes or stranded on the road somewhere. Check the list at Middle Tennessee Red Cross.
Flood assistance. Those in need of shelter or assistance can reach the Red Cross at (615) 250-4300. For non-emergencies, call (615) 862-8574.
Weather updates. The weather is expected to get worse over the next 24-36 hours with lots more rain on the way. Check your local forecast and sign up for text message or e-mail alerts over at The Weather Channel, see localized coverage at NashvilleWX, and tune into NOAA if you’ve got a weather radio handy. We also hear that 99.7 FM is giving great updates in case of a power outage.
Traffic. Roads are closing all over the city and traffic is a mess. Some of the best resources we’ve found have been the TDOT Smartmap and the Tennessean’s realtime traffic map. You can also read and share Nashville road closures and traffic conditions on Twitter @NashTraffic. For Franklin Road closures, follow @FranklinTraffic on Twitter.
It is a buyer’s market when it comes to housing. With housing prices at an all-time low and tax incentives expiring soon, there are a few things to consider when it comes to homeowners insurance before making a costly investment decision.
Before purchasing a home, consider:
Flood insurance. Is the home you are interested in located in a flood plain? If so, how much will flood insurance cost you? Keep in mind flood insurance must be purchased separately from homeowners insurance
Past damage. Just as you can request a history report on a used vehicle, you can request a CLUE (Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange) and/or an A-Plus (Automated Property Loss Underwriting System) report on a home you want to purchase. These reports will detail insurance claims involving the home, such as those relating to fire, floods, water damage and mold. Knowing the damages a house has experienced can help you know about potential problems to look for, such as mold damage that was not completely remediated.
The history of a home’s location. Consider the natural disasters your home may fall victim to, like hurricanes, tornadoes, heavy rains, earthquakes, wildfires and so on.
Safety first. A home with best safety features can lower insurance premiums. The New York Times reports “a home in a community with a professional fire department rather than volunteers” may cost a homeowner less to insure. In addition, “Installing smoke detectors, burglar alarms and deadbolt locks can save you 5 percent. It can be expensive but installing alarms that alert police and fire of a break-in or fire can cut as much as 20 percent from the premium cost.”
It’s a late night at the office, and your meeting with a client just finished. All you want to do is go home, heat up some leftovers and call it a night. So you do: you leave the client documents out on the meeting table in your office. You guess there’s really no need to put them in your file cabinet—it’s just one night. All you worry about is how fast you can make it into your car in this freezing weather. You are so happy it’s the weekend.
The next morning you get a call from your business partner: your office is flooded and he doesn’t know where the phone number for the document drying company is. The pipes froze sometime during the night and burst. The documents and books in the waterproof/fireproof file cabinets are fine. Everything else is soaked. Your client’s paperwork are still on the meeting table; all the documents are wet.
This can happen to anyone and to any business–and it has. Take the campus of the University of Rhode Island, for example. The recent Rhode Island flood caused about $2 million in damages to administrative and academic buildings. Efforts are currently underway to prevent mold damage. The closures because of the flood damage cost the university a loss in revenue, as it has had to cancel and postpone its programs and close community resources as they remediate the flood damage.
Water, no matter how it creeps into a building, can cause businesses of any size to suffer huge losses. Is your business prepared for unexpected flood damage? Does your disaster plan include document recovery?
Find Your Document Drying Options
If you know you need a document drying and recoveryplan for your business but aren’t sure what to do or where to start, look for us at the annual RIMS Conference. This conference takes place April 25-29, 2010 at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, and Rapid Refile will be there to answer all your flood prevention and recovery questions. Rapid Refile has top experts in the document-reprocessing field who can provide you with information about disaster recovery, document drying, book drying and reclamation.
Visit Rapid Refile at the RIMS Conference at booth 2251.
Think you don’t need to include document drying and recovery into your disaster plan? Think again. Although this is a topic many aren’t concerned with, not planning document recovery or book drying into an emergency disaster plan may be regrettable.
The following are some reasons why you must include document drying and recovery should be included in your disaster plan:
Save your business. Documents and books lost to water or smoke damage can cause a loss of clients and future business.
Have a way to restore patient x-rays. Most doctors’ offices don’t keep back-up x-rays, and only few keep digital copies. Losing any part of patient’s file can be a liability to a clinic.
Save your memories. Photographs are often the way people remember significant events in their lives. If you don’t have a way to replace wedding photos, lost the negatives to photos of your child’s first steps and the like, seriously consider document restoration in your disaster plan.
5. Restore blueprints. If you were working on a project for a client at home and the sprinkler system accidentally went off, would you have to start form square 1 to recreate you work? Save yourself time and call a document drying professional that can restore your wet work faster than you can recreate it.
Image from RIMS, Inc.
If you are in the Boston-area and you want to learn more about document and book drying services, visit the RIMS Conference at the Boston Convention Center on April 25-29, 2010.Rapid Refile professionals will be at this annual conference and available to help you better understand:
Preventative measures such as scanning and storage techniques
The science of document drying and reclamation to illuminate the various processes employed to achieve very different goals depending on the particular needs of the client
Document recovery as an independent part of disaster planning and emergency response
The various aspects of disaster recovery, including documents drying and reclamation
After a week of heavy rains left California wet and muddy, residents are bracing for yet another storm. The National Weather Service reports a smaller storm is expected to make landfall on Tuesday and should last a couple of days.
This comes as bad news as people took advantage of the drier weather and began the restoration process this weekend. The week of stormy weather affected the hills to the beaches: recently wildfire-devastated areas experienced mud slides and the coast had dirty beaches as the San Gabriel River sent trash to line the ocean shores. Stranger yet, cities across the state witnessed the fall of hail, and the sighting of a funnel cloud prompted a tornado warning near Brentwood. Work crews and residents in California are now scrambling to clean up what they can before the next wave of rain hits.
It is vital that water damage caused by the recent storms is cleaned up as mold damage will soon follow if items are left damp. A company that specialized in disaster recovery services can assist in this effort and help businesses and homeowners get back on their feet by drying wet documents and other items.
