The recent hurricane on the East Coast may be over, but the cleanup process is just now beginning. Beyond debris pickup, property managers and owners across the area are learning what preparations worked well, and what they can do better next time.

Photo credit: S. Shepherd. Click on the image for more from this photographer.

Regardless of your location, this is a good time to ask yourself if you would have been ready to handle Sandy. While those of us who were just temporarily inconvenienced may be ready to thank our lucky stars and move on, disasters such as these should move us to preventative action.

Thankfully, the fourth edition of Before and After Disaster Strikes: Developing an Emergency Procedures Manual from the Institute of Real Estate Management (IREM) has arrived on the scene just in time to help property managers and other owners get started on this vital, yet daunting process.

Far from just counting fire extinguishers and first aid kits, this book offers checklists of the more obvious risk management activities (broken out by both disaster and building types), and a comprehensive look at the more esoteric, easily forgotten elements of disaster planning. Are you storing the right types of information backups, so you can get back to normal business operations ASAP? Do you have the right kind of insurance? How will you get the word out to tenants, as well as outsiders and the media? Continue reading »