Tuesday Scenario Context

Hurricane Zachary is forecast to make landfall on the Outer Banks of North Carolina as a CAT-2 Hurricane with sustained winds of roughly 100 miles per hour.  Landfall is expected early morning today, probably about 6:00 AM Eastern (Exercise-time and real-time will not coincide).

The storm will continue in a northerly direction.  How much east or west is hard to predict.  But in any case Tuesday afternoon will be very tough for the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area and eventually for the Philadelphia-Wilmington area and everyone in between.

Rain bands and wind gusts are already being experienced in Northern Virginia, Southern Maryland, and the District of Columbia.  Sustained rain and gusts over 40 miles per hour are predicted to begin by 9:00 AM in the nation's capital.

The supply chain was able to operate at or near full-capacity over the weekend.  There have been fuel shortages (see prior posts) but creative and persistent professionals were able to secure sufficient fuel to continue and surge distribution efforts in anticipation of the storm.

Right now electric power, telecommunications and other systems are operating normally over most of the region (there are some spot outages emerging in Coastal North Carolina and the Hampton Roads metropolitan region).

Questions for you to start thinking through:

What are operational plans for today?  For tomorrow?
What have you told your employees to expect?
What have you told your clients/customers?
What have you done to prepare for loss of electricity?
What have you done to prepare for loss of regular telecommunications?
Based on your prior experience, what worries you the most?
As the storm approaches, what are your priorities?
After the storm passes, what will be your priority?

Compared with your preparations for Hurricane Sandy, what are you doing differently?

You don't need to answer these questions here, there will be plenty of opportunity when the exercise starts at 9:00.  But if there is an equally important question that is not being asked, please use the comment function to state the question for everyone's benefit.

Thank you for your interest in enhancing the readiness and resilience of supply chains and this region.