How do we protect our most important data?

I have been in Los Angeles the last 3 days, arriving on the day where the 4 fires were raging in different locations around this very big city. 

First thing I was looking at as someone travelling and from outside of the city: 

🚨 How the transport and infrastructure is holding? 

🚨 What was and is the impact on all the 2 million people living in and around LA? 

🚨 How the important buildings are prepared or tried to be prepared for a natural disaster than can and does occur regularly in a region? 

🚨Was the city prepared due to its recurrent fire risks? 

When looking at specialists' recommendations related to protection from the natural disasters of important facilities, what are they? 

Are we able to really protect our physical wealth, our data, systems that control it all? 

The first recommendations I found was, ironically for this case - location: 

1. Location choice

The idea is to avoid high-risk areas by strategically selecting locations for datacentre or similar critical infrastructure facilities. In the business of datacentres that is not always possible though, datacentres are built in busy metropolitan areas due to business & customer demand. 

What is left then? 

Isolating datacentre servers as much as possible away from the windows, if possible underground and maximizing on the next recommendation.

2. Fire suppression system

As recommended by Uptime Institute hashtag#VESDA ("very early smoke detection apparatus") system is considered the most advanced aspirating smoke detection systems in the fire industry. It detects smoke by drawing air through a network of pipes, filtering it, and then exposing it to a laser light source. 

3. Test, train and concentrate on prevention

While testing and preparing staff for the crisis situation is important, experts recommend working with scenarios and adopting flexible procedures that allow staff to make quick decisions based on the situation they observe without hierarchical paralysis. 

With all that, how the City of Los Angeles was prepared for the disaster? Overall, it seems residential areas have suffered the most, telecommunications, internet and transport availability were surprisingly seamless at the time of my visit and it seems we are better and protecting what is marked as "critical". 

It seems people are always most impacted in such moments and this one was no exception. 

While it's great we have avoided a potential chaos that a disrupted mobile communications across the city would have caused if any infrastructure got impacted, however seeing in my hotel lobby distraught LA residents chased from their houses with their belongings, their kids and dogs close by showed just how much prevention and preparation work is needed to protect people, who are just as critical. And this seems still to be a work in progress even in the city of angels. 

What are your thoughts on natural disasters impact, are they preventable?

#LAfires #DisasterRecovery #naturaldisasters