Dive Brief:

• Thanks to the damage wrought by Hurricane Matthew, many Atlantic coast-based businesses are reformulating their natural disaster plans to include greater preparedness, according to FM Global.
• Roughly 28% of 1,224 employees polled from Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas believe their employer is planning to increase preparedness for natural disasters. 
• Approximately 2 out of 5, or 38% of employees state that Hurricane Matthew seriously disrupted regular business operations, while 26% said their companies lost both customers and orders thanks to the storm.

Dive Insight:

The effects of the hurricane often last far longer than the storm, and disaster-preparedness through flood resilience or other related policies could reduce weather-related losses.

In the case of Matthew, many businesses continued to lose revenue weeks after the storm given sustained closures of I-95, a critical freight corridor. At the national scale, Congress is set to fund greater flood protection initiatives during the lame-duck session.

But given recent experiences, companies and logistics providers would do well to cross-reference their supply chain with flood maps, specially as climate change is increasing the likelihood of flooding in this area.