Surviving the hurricane that devastated New Orleans: The Oreck® story (Edited dispatches from Baselinemag.com)¹

Faced with August 27th warnings of a direct hit by Hurricane Katrina, Oreck's plan: Move operations from its headquarters and data center in New Orleans to its Long Beach, Mississippi, manufacturing and call center facility, and vice versa. These operations would be supplemented by a backup data center in Boulder, Colorado, and a call center in Denver. Oreck didn't plan on both its New Orleans and Long Beach facilities taking a hit.

The lesson: Plan for a worst-case scenario, but remember that disasters have the potential to exceed expectations.

Oreck's efforts stress the importance of backing up key data and people in dispersed locations, of being able to strip the company down to its essentials and of having a staff that can improvise even as the best-laid plans go awry.

Meanwhile, Oreck backs up its last eight hours of activity - invoices, manufacturing requests and shipment information - on tapes to be reloaded on its systems in Boulder. Oreck CEO Tom Oreck, the 54-year old son of company founder David Oreck, takes the tapes to Houston and sends them to Boulder via Federal Express.

CEO Oreck then launches the company's contingency plan, which transfers the company's call center to Denver, a site that regularly takes call overflow from its Long Beach call center. Oreck employees take all the data and documents - customer data, shipping destinations and inventory information - the company would need to restart later.

On September 14, cleanup crews at Oreck's Long Beach plant battle mold from storm water. Oreck's Web site is now running again, but there are two - or three-week delays on Oreck.com orders. The main challenge for Oreck is communications: The phone company can't give a timeline on laying the lines it needs to restore communications.

CEO Oreck is looking at other temporary locations for his facilities in Dallas in case the company can't move back to New Orleans quickly. For Oreck, the company's eventual return to New Orleans is a matter of when, not if.