From the Book of Shamstradamus – Disaster Prognosticator

Written by Jerry Shamburg

My name is Gerald Shamburg and I am a former Emergency Manager with over 30 years of experience with public and private sector organizations. I have experienced earthquakes, floods, volcanic eruptions, labor strikes, wildfire, civil unrest, aircraft disasters, terrorism, and even killer bees. I had the unique opportunity to observe the responses and management of these events with every level of the response chain, from first responders to boardroom executives.

This is the first of a new series of short articles about emergency exercises and how you can improve your business or organization’s emergency plans. But first, I thought I would explain the catchy name of this blog.

Toward the latter part of my career, I was a member of a global crisis management team. My core function was to develop and facilitate approximately 30-40 tabletop exercises and 1-2 functional or full-scale exercises each year. As I conducted so many exercises, I began to develop scenarios that occurred in real-life. Not every exercise mind you, but one or two a year would actually come true; sometimes the scenario I was focusing on would occur in the middle of the exercise!  My team began to call me Shamstradamus the Disaster Prognosticator and awarded me with a special desk plate.

Here is one of the first examples of my special abilities – The scene is a tabletop exercise for a data center management team.  The data center was located in a high-rise facility. This was our first engagement; the exercise objectives were by design broad and focused on the initial actions and notifications within the building and within the company.

We were assembled in a conference room directly beneath the data center. The scenario identifies a series of power glitches and escalates to a small fire in a panel near the data center. This was to be the trigger slide that would prompt more discussion. But just as I display the slide, the data center manager receives an emergency notification and simultaneously water begins to flow from the overhead directly above us. A water pipe has ruptured and water was pouring into the data center. The exercise was cancelled. 

I then observed a textbook response by the very team I was there to evaluate. The impact to business and the data center was minimal and the recovery process was completed in 24 hours. BUT the exercise sponsor and participants seemed glad for me to depart! The legend of Shamstradamus was born.

In future articles, I will dive deeper and share some thoughts and experiences that will help your emergency management program.

Next month: TO PREPARE IS AN ACTION VERB – HAS YOUR BUSINESS TAKEN THESE BASIC ACTIONS?

Gerald (Jerry) Shamburg is an Advisory Board Member and Resiliency Coach with The Resiliency Initiative. He can be contacted via email: Jerry@theresiliencyinitiative.com.