October 2013 storms

The much forecast storm did hit the south of England and although not as ferocious as the 1987 storm it still did a great deal of damage.

I went into the office on the Monday and mentioned to our receptionist that the storm had taken my dustbin lid and thrown it down to the bottom of my garden.  My receptionist listen to me and then said that the wind had taken off most of her roof and it was lucky that she had moved her car the night before as most of the roof rubble landed where he car would normally have been parked.  One of my colleagues had no electricity for two days so I think I got away with it very lightly!

The only detrimental effect was that the power had gone off in the office for a period of time and then came back on; our UPS (uninterruptable power supply) protected the server and data but our Xerox Phaser printer went through a full restart; it uses solid ink blocks and in the event of a power outage runs through a cleaning cycle which dumps all the ink in the system into a waste tray.  These ink blocks are not cheap, but a clogged up printer would be a real problem.

I have spoken to a number of my clients who had differing experience of the storm; from “What Storm? ” in the north of the country to “quite extensive damage” in the west country.  No one had been injured and that is in part due to the Met Office giving accurate and timely warning about the storm. 

Sadly that was not the case in 1987, when poor Michael Fish played down the impending weather pattern. I remember seeing a fishing boat that had been picked up and dumped into the local tennis court and all the trees that had been uprooted,  A sorry state.

Clients that have a business continuity plan in place were prepared this time and were able to pick themselves up and continue to work. A lesson well learned.