This scenario is now moving you a few days into the future:
On Friday, October 25 Puerto Rico is hit with Category 3 winds (111-129 mph), storm surge, and related damage. On Sunday, October 27 Nassau is pummeled by Category 4 winds (130-156). There is significant loss of life and catastrophic impacts on infrastructure. Fortunately for already hard-hit Floridians, Zachary then turns north with the Gulf Stream. Even so Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties measure winds up to fifty miles per hour and several more inches of rain.
The models all agree that over the weekend Zachary's track will parallel the East Coast coming ashore somewhere between North Carolina and Long Island. Much depends on what happens to Zachary's strength and direction after making landfall.
Please access the comments section (immediately below) to participate in this phase of the virtual exercise. (Please complete these comments by midnight on October 25.)
It is not yet clear where Zachary will come ashore, it could be anywhere between North Carolina and Long Island. In the mid-Atlantic, what are you doing to prepare?
ReplyDeleteBecause of the dramatic impact of Yolanda, people along the Eastern seaboard are especially concerned about Zachary. Hoarding spikes demand for several resources including water, gasoline, generators, batteries, and more. There are spot shortages magnified by social media and mainstream media that seem to spur more hoarding behavior even well beyond the hurricane's projected track.
What are you doing to supply demand?
What are you doing to manage volume?
What are you doing to anticipate a direct impact on your operations by Zachary?
What are you doing to anticipate post-storm recovery of operations?
We would start now with maximizing onsite storage of critical materials chemical, fuel, supply levels,
Delete- activate the Hurricane response procedure
- activate the Disaster funds re-imbursement team
- start developing staff plans
- Activate the IMT and move to an ICS model from daily operations
I am only guessing but I expect the "Anonymous" immediately above may be part of public sector water. Standing up the "Disaster Funds re-imbursement team" suggests a public sector connection. IMT is Incident Management Team and ICS is Incident Command System. These are emergency management terms-of-art common in the public sector and are the tip-of-the-iceberg in terms of ongoing professional development and planning in the public sector.
DeleteFirst I'd call my wife to say she would not be seeing me all weekend and that she should fill up water bottles and try to top off the gas tank (doubt that will be possible given what's been said.)
ReplyDeleteSecond, we would send out notices to all personnel encouraging them to take personal preparations and expect a heavy weekend schedule.
I'm guessing we will be able to roll at least through midnight on Sunday, maybe most of the day on Monday. And because it's a weekend demand will be gigantic. I hear you on hoarding. Given Yolanda and the tv pictures from Puerto Rico and all, everyone will expect the worse.
I'm really worried about fuel now, so that's probably where I'll spend most of my time.
I'm also worried about having drivers AFTER the storm. We'll be sure to get them off the road in plenty of time (usually about six hours before a hit)). But If a lot of my drivers home situation is bad, that's where they will stay. So I may look to bring in some out-of-the-area drivers to standby on Monday. I will offer to pay overtime and put up any drivers that want to standby with their power units.
BTW, I probably will have some clients evacuating product as well as surging product so we'll be going crazy Friday through Monday at least.
It seems we'd want to alert our Office of Public Affairs and have a regional coordination call to get a coordinated message out. Test test, Jeff King, COG
ReplyDeleteWe have a standard operating protocol to prepare for hurricanes. Sounds like "General Distribution" is similar to ours. But I'm not sure our business continuity plan matches the challenge described here.
ReplyDelete1. Our company has significant operations in South Florida. I expect many of our best people and most "excess" capacity is already relocated there. This limits what we can do here.
2. I don't know how credible your fuel scenario may be, but taking it on face-value this is already a crisis in Delmarva.
3. As others have said, demand will be through the roof. But our ability to surge will be constrained by the fuel situation. If there are evacuations, where should we surge?
4. In our case, at some point we will pull back from distribution here and relocate personnel, power units, rolling stock, and even some product out of harms way, outside the cone of uncertainty. Given the fuel situation, we may do this earlier instead of later. In other words, in consultation with our customers we might pull back from Monday (?) deliveries in order to be sure our recovery resources have time and ability to be safe.
For this kind of comment, I'm just going to be anonymous. Will be very interested if others have a better way to go forward.
If you do not make Monday deliveries and the hurricane does not hit until late Monday or Tuesday morning, then given the increased demand anticipated there will be many more empty shelves. And it seems like I have read that when there are empty shelves this increases hoarding behavior for almost everything still on the shelves, which will make recovery even that more difficult. Am I drawing the right implications from your comment?
DeletePhilip, If we do not deliver on Monday and the hurricane does not make landfall until mid-afternoon or evening then, yes, there would be retail shortages. I am not familiar with the link between shortages and hoarding, but it makes intuitive sense.
DeleteBut to be clear: If the storm is a significant threat, we need to get trucks, trailers, and even drivers outside the threat zone to be sure we don't lose our ability to come back after the hurricane passes. If the fuel situation is iffy and if we might also be moving through evacuation pile-ups, there could be little choice but to abandon Monday deliveries.
Demand Management: In most hurricane situations we can predict demand based on prior consumption patterns. For reasons noted by others, in this case demand will probably exceed previously seen highs.
ReplyDeleteVolume Management: We will be working with product vendors to increase inventory throughput. We will work with transportation vendors to increase outputs to retail clients. We will work with retail clients to increase deliveries. Agree that fuel could be a problem in this case.
Operational Continuity: Our site selection and construction standards anticipated risks worse than Zachary. We should be able to continue operations. My biggest concerns are loss of power (and not being able to refuel generators) and being able to move trucks (will roads be accessible).
Recovery: Right now I would be mostly focused on meeting the certainty of demand-and-volume surge. While I'm guessing a drill like this will have us hit, in the real-world I would not focus much on recovery until maybe 72 hours out when I have a better sense of likely consequences.
I'm observing, not a supply chain professional and I'm fascinated by all this talk of surging supplies before the storm. To what extent does this include water and ice? To what extent do you surge water and ice before the storm but don't expect to sell until after the storm? If you do this, where do you put the water and ice to be able to move after the storm?
ReplyDeleteTo answer your question, I reached out to a couple of the private water experts registered for next week. Here's one of the responses:
Delete"Water & ice are low price commodities and there is generally little to no pre-build beyond contracted quantities & existing warehouse inventories. Storage costs relative to selling price is expensive."
Another expert explains that it depends on the business model for the source of water. Some do not pre-build water supplies. Others do source significant quantities before production or demand requires.
DeleteBoth experts note that the refrigeration costs associated with ice discourage any significant pre-build of supply.
I am amazed there are no media calls for residents to use gallon jugs to make block ice in their freezers before the storm hits. Block ice willl last much longer than cube ice if the power is out.
DeleteTo Anon's point, gallon water actually is one of the water items that customers want distro'd out to their stores PRIOR to the storm. After the storm, not so much. Other water items, like 24 pks, are very important to get to the stores both before and after the storm. Some customers do also distro ice to the stores prior to the storm.
DeleteVA811 is reviewing our Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery procedures. We are verifying each employee has updated their emergency contact numbers. We have established a schedule with our vendor to refuel generators in the event of long term power outage.
ReplyDeleteI know the real drill is not until next week, but this is already interesting. I work for an EMA. I did not realize how much the private sector leans-into a major weather event.
ReplyDeleteCraig Fugate has what he calls the Waffle House Index. When the Waffle House is open, resilience and recovery are pretty well guaranteed. The longer the Waffle House is closed, the worse the event.
So maybe, no matter how bad the event, if we can keep goods moving and commerce humming we have avoided a catastrophe.
I'm beginning to see how the private sector prepares. Am looking forward to seeing how you recover.
Many have suggested the biggest difference between a catastrophe and a non-catastrophe is psychological. If one of the tasks of emergency management is to restore "normal", one of the best ways to do this is to restore regular business operations as soon as possible. Not having access to water, food, pharma, medical supplies, fuel, and cash is one definition of catastrophe. Maintain access = avoid catastrophe. It's a statement that is meant as a question.
DeleteFor hurricanes the size of Yolanda and Zachary, we will have 7 to 10 days notice that is it coming, even though we won't know the exact landfall area that far out. So we will be in the middle of responding to Yolanda when we find out about the possibility of Zachary. We will immediately begin discussions on how we will handle them jointly, with all of the resources we have along the East Coast.
ReplyDeleteWe will follow our normal process of bringing as much inbound in on key storm items that we can, although there will probably be short supply from manufacturers on some product.
We will be continuing to make normal deliveries to our customers up until winds exceeding 40 mph. Customers may want to add extra deliveries or pull deliveries in prior to Monday. We may be limited in what we can accommodate, depending on how depleted/constrained the trailer and driver pool is. And we will be talking to customers about how much we can flex up with our throughput prior to the storm, again to get the non-perishables and "hard" perishable items out to the store beforehand. Then post-storm we will be evaluating our status in each warehouse, and again talking to the customers daily about the volume we can handle. But we will get to that part next week.
As far as taking care of our facilities, we have mobile generators that we will move into position as we have a better idea where landfall will be. We will secure everything on the premises at the facilities that we think may be hit by strong winds. We will keep our warehouses open and depending on when the shifts start versus when the storm hits, should be able to keep operating our facilities. With Hurricane Sandy, MA and CT put out a ban on personal vehicle travel...only "essential" people could be on the roads. This caused issues for us being able to continue operations, as we did not want employees to have to deal with getting pulled over by the police. But barring this kind of situation, we will have at least skeleton crews as the storm hits, "day zero".
As mentioned for Yolanda, we will be evaluating our need and capabilities for SWAT and 3rd party labor support, both in the warehouse and for transportation needs.
Wholesale Food: Many thanks for the detailed run down. Because I know some public sector folks are observing these discussions a clarification for them. The "customers" referenced above are retail food outlets, not general consumers.
DeleteThanks, too, for foreshadowing the travel ban issue. I just recently learned that in Delaware the legal definition of "essential personnel" has been expanded to include those involved in the delivery of food. Here's the statutory language (Delaware Essential Service Law, TITLE 20, Military and Civil Defense)
""Essential personnel" for purposes of this subsection shall mean those employees and/or personnel who are necessary to maintain the core functions of a government body or entity, and to maintain the health and safety of the people in Delaware by providing services provided by public utilities as defined in § 102(2) of Title 26 healthcare services, and food and fuel deliveries during a state of emergency, regardless of whether they are employed by a public or private entity."
http://delcode.delaware.gov/title20/c031/sc03/index.shtml#3116
Wholesale Food: Given the fuel shortages outlined, do you already have fuel-on-hand for your generators or is this locally sourced after the generator is put in place?
DeleteAny notion about how your trucking vendors are set up to supplement fuel sources if retail is as constrained as has been outlined?
In my experience most of the trucking firms outsource the vast majority of their fuel needs. The bigger the firm, the more likely it will be outsourced. What I'm reading here suggests the truck stops are probably already out of fuel or nearly out. The supply chain could come to a dead stop before Zachary even touches land.
DeleteA COMMENT ON HOARDING:
ReplyDeleteThere is a reference to hoarding in the set-up. A couple of other comments have acknowledged a potential problem. Until a supply chain expert explains why not, I suggest hoarding is going to be a HUGE problem this weekend.
The nation -- even world -- has had ten days of wall-to-wall television coverage of the post-Yolanda situation in South Florida. 400,000 homeless was one of the factoids shared. Now we have Zachary hitting Puerto Rico, then the Bahamas, and now heading toward the most densely populated region of the nation.
I'm guessing volume management will be off-the-charts. But I also know just enough to be dangerous. Will welcome a correction.
Empty shelves make Americans very nervous. Whether the cause is hoarding, non-delivery, or whatever, I bet that if shelves are empty on Monday this will have significant implications for several aspects of response and recovery. Seems like this is a problem we could even should try to mitigate.
DeleteAs a trucking company we are now basically hand to mouth with fuel. We have exhausted our local Mid-Atlantic supplies. Most local diesel fuel vendors cannot get access to fresh supplies of fuel for delivery to our facilities. However we have been fortunate to this point to bring in two truckloads (16,000 gallons +/-) of diesel fuel; of which our vendor has sourced from their bulk storage facility in Louisville KY for direct delivery to our above ground fueling tanks located in Baltimore, MD and Florence, NJ. We had this contingency plan in place after lessons learned from Sandy.
ReplyDeleteWe are spending a significant amount of time delivering food, and related storm supplies (generators, tarps, plywood, etc) for our distributors due to the inability to easily access shopping centers because of congestion in and around the shopping complexes. We are reaching out to our vendors in the retail market to solicit help from local law enforcement in order to establish better traffic controls in and around thier retail locations (in an attempt to expedite delivery of needed supplies). Our drivers are at risk of running out of Federal DOT hours due to the exorbanant amount of time it is taking to make deliveries. This is taking it's toll on driver availablity as we have numerous drivers requesting time off to secure their own property and families ahead of the storm. Fuel and driver shortages are our biggest challenges currently.
As part of our contingency plan to deal with the driver shortage ; earlier in the week, we brought in drivers from our terminals in Ohio, and Kentucky to assist with the workload. Unfortunately, we have had to return them to their home domicile on Friday because of the risk that we would run out of fuel. They need enough diesel in their trucks to get back home to Kentucky and Ohio - we did not want to take any chances yesterday with the "unknowns" of getting access to diesel fuel - so we sent our out of state drivers home as a precautionary measure (ahead of landfall, and before we exhausted our fuel supplies).
With our replenished supplies of fuel, we can likely operate for another 12-18 hours with our local equipment. However, some of that fuel and driver time will be spent re-positioning our tractor power units, and trailers to higher ground and safe zones within our system. Our ability to service our customers (food, medical & home supply distributors, etc) will be greatly diminished in the next 24 hours.
Our intent (assuming we cannot source any additional diesel fuel) is to cease general operations late Sunday afternoon. We will keep a skeleton crew at our operations center in New Jersey and Maryland in order to continue to monitor the storm and in order to keep our assets and property secure.
Reading all of what folks are bringing together here, I see the possibility that the supply chain will have to make a "strategic retreat" nearly 48 hours before Zachary shows up. Moreover it is not at all clear that the situation will be any better once the hurricane passes. Unless distributors have the fuel to move product, it seems like emergency water, retail food, medical supplies, pharmaceuticals, and more could be at a dead stop. Have I misunderstood?
ReplyDeleteAre there alternatives that should and can be explored? Are there any alternatives that could or should involve public sector decisionmakers?
I'm seeing the same thing happening. Sort of like France collapsing
DeleteYou've got it right as far as I'm concerned. No gas, no go.
DeleteIs it reasonable to have rationing of goods by Saturday or Sunday? It is fair and just. Having some haord is depressing to the community.
ReplyDeleteThe way I see this playing out I now regret not giving more attention to last week's question about rationing. But in the real world given what I knew then (not what I see happening now) I would not have given much attention to rationing and might have even resisted it if I thought it would complicate my ability to get the fuel we need.
DeleteAs someone wrote back when the question was first asked, I don't think most of the business community would resist a reasonable fuel rationing program (but what does reasonable look like?). But at least in my role I would not be pushing for it. Not my job. My job is to get the fuel that I need to move the product that my customers are demanding. And as "Truckload Transportation Company" made clear this is takign a lot of creativity and plenty of hours to put together--- rationing or not. I guess government isn't playing until Tuesday. But I see this as their job, not mine.
ReplyDeleteThere has been no discussion of whether the Governors of the various affected states have waived DOT driver hour limits, increased fuel and supply truck weight limits, and worked with the EPA to lift reformulated gasoline requirements in non-attainment areas as a way to maximize use of the trucks that are on the road and allow the fuel distributers to move fuel around with fewer restraints. That likely would have been included in the emergency orders issued related to the storm. Would this have some impact on fuel and material supply?
ReplyDeleteAdditionally, Virginia has a plan to provide emergency fuel supplies along the Hampton Roads evacuation paths to ensure that cars and trucks are not running out of gasoline or diesel along the evacuation routs and clogging the flow of traffic. How has that been assumed to work during the drill?
Anon:
DeleteGreat inputs. Two answers:
In-the-scenario: The systemic fuel problem here is lack of supply, not distribution of supply. The shut-down of so many Gulf refineries would have an extraordinary effect on supply everywhere east of the Rockies. So I don't think the regulatory relief would have much effect per se. But there are experts participating and I welcome their correction.
As you will see a bit later today, we have anticipated the VDOT emergency fuel mobilization. The SME consulted as part of the exercise design believes the fundamental supply situation described here would quickly overwhelm the capability of that effort. But I am sure there are alternative points-of-view.
Outside the scenario, the public sector will not begin to play until tomorrow (Tuesday morning). Frankly this soft-roll out of the online supply chain exercise has become much more substantive, much more quickly than I anticipated.
We have our terminals topped off with fuel. Using that supply as a last resort. Our fuel department is monitoring supplies
ReplyDeleteIn katrina and sandi we were able to source supplies
regarding waiving HOS.. Our Company will not do that. Evern though the DOT has waived HOS that in no way protects a Carrier from liability if there is a collision with our Driver over HOS. Therefore we will run within the HOS guidelines
ReplyDeleteOur Drivers en route from other aread are topping off fuel before picking up their loads
ReplyDelete