Don’t Let Your Records Go Up in Flames

I heard about a document storage warehouse fire happening in Bartlett (outside of Chicago) that currently has been going on for 4 days. The first thing I thought was “Oh my goodness! All the business records that were going up in smoke! I wonder if the different businesses that store their records at this warehouse have any other copies of these records?”

Hopefully your business does not have only 1 paper copy stored at an offsite warehouse. If so, I think this should spark you to consider implementing a disaster recovery strategy. Or perhaps this can help you with convincing your company decision makers to keep your business records electronically. It is much easier to have a backup of an electronic record than to create a paper copy of all your physical records in a different location for disaster preparedness reasons. With any format that you use (whether it’s physical or electronic) you must have a backup plan for your records or you may be in the unfortunate situation of losing your records in a warehouse fire.

Have you considered what you would do if all your offsite records went up in smoke? Do you think having a paper copy of a record is the safest way to store your records? If you only use paper as your official copies what is your backup plan? Have you asked your storage vendor about their fire suppression methods? I have lots of questions. I hope you do, too!