Wet is not nearly accurate enough

I have been spending a fair amount of time in the north of England and recently the weather conditions have been atrocious.  At one stage I wondered  if a boat would have been a better mode of transport.

One of my car journeys was particularly memorable, It was just getting dark when a car coming towards me began flashing his headlights;  possibly a police speed trap?  I rounded a bend in the road and realised the true meaning of the flashing.  The road was more of a lake than a road,  should I risk it and drive through or find an alternative route.  I decided that it might be better to follow the locals and turn around.  The flood could have been very deep in the middle and being marooned was not my idea of fun.

I mention this situation as I found out later that two of my clients had been flooded out of their premises.  Their server rooms were on the ground floor and although the servers were in racks, the cabling and connections were not sufficiently high to escape the deluge.

Fortunately both clients have robust business continuity and disaster recovery plans.  It took one client two days and the other three days to have a temporary home and get systems up and running, thus proving the benefit of this type of disaster planning.

The Met Office said that these were the worst storms for 30 years.  Our business continuity systems were written to cope with most emergencies   and I am glad that  my Clients were able to 'weather the storm',  literally in these cases.

ISO27001 specifies a business continuity procedure should be in place and  BS ISO 22301:2012 Societal security  business continuity management system (which replaces BS 25999) also requires a robust business continuity and disaster recovery plan to be in place.