Under Fire: Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity

About the Program

Category: Risk and Emergency Management (Best in Category)

Year: 2014

In April 2013 Macomb County experienced a major electrical fire in its historic 13-story County Building built in 1932. This presented a major challenge to the Information Technology (IT) Department because it housed the County’s data center. As a result, all power and communications infrastructure were destroyed, cutting off the County from its core systems, and leaving equipment and data in an uncertain condition due to soot and water damage. There was no secondary site for operational redundancy and no full tape backup, leaving the County vulnerable and facing a full crisis. Through an Emergency Order, action was quickly taken to temporarily rebuild the communications and power in order to work to restore the data, move it to another location, build a new data center, and install new infrastructure. This enabled us to not only effectively recover from the disaster, but in turn to develop an experience-driven strategy for business continuity that yielded success beyond simply recovering from the crisis, but by also creating new regional partnerships and technology platforms that will derive benefits for years to come.