I was involved in a group discussion today about disaster recovery and business continuity (put on by NOREX, a consortium that my organization belongs to and one I would definitely recommend). One of the lessons people learned from the disaster was amusing (and very scary). Basically, the lesson learned was subterfuge.
Let me ‘splain. Many of the companies that had branches in New Orleans found that their generators and other equipment they were trying to deliver were confiscated by the National Guard for use by FEMA. Some of the companies that were involved in the discussion learned of this before they arrived at the roadblocks. Many of these companies used company vehicles to deliver the equipment. As is often the case (and in keeping with the KISS principle), these business vehicles are painted white, kinda like a government vehicle (take a look at this FEMA truck). So, they just painted FEMA (using a stencil, I am assuming) and rolled right through roadblocks and their equipment was not touched.
Others using their white vehicles (without the FEMA paintings) just got in line behind other FEMA vehicles and rolled through.
I guess you do what you have to do, but I worry that it was that easy to get through checkpoints like that. In that much chaos, I guess that kinda stuff is just going to happen. Hopefully it is not that easy in a normal situation!
Vet
