Update: IT managers brace for Isabel

Computerworld - IT managers along the mid-Atlantic coast were busy this week double-checking telecommunication lines and reviewing disaster recovery plans in preparation for Hurricane Isabel, which could cause billions of dollars in damage by tomorrow. Most in danger are telecommunications and other technology infrastructures in both the private and government sectors.
The U.S. Census Bureau this week calculated that nearly 50 million people could be affected by the hurricane. As of 11 a.m. EST today, the hurricane was making landfall near Cape Hatteras, N.C., with strong winds, heavy rain and flooding expected as far north as New Jersey and Pennsylvania through tomorrow.
Mark Pennington, information systems director for the Virginia Department of Emergency Management in Richmond, said telecommunication lines are of particular concern for state and private entities because a wet summer has left many trees susceptible to strong winds. "It doesn't take much to put a single node out of business. There's a large amount of concern with trees still in soggy ground, and with high winds coming in, we're worried about them doing damage to telecom lines," he said.
Pennington said before the storm hit that he had reviewed his agency's business recovery plans to ensure they're up to date, and he replicated all servers to hot sites "so if we do get hit hard, at least our information is moved off-site." He has also checked backup generators to ensure that they're running and fuel tanks are full.
The Virginia Department of Emergency Management, the state's counterpart to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, also began archiving disk hard drives as well as tapes in its underground bunker operations center for disaster recovery purposes, Pennington said. "We ended up with servers with hot-swappable SCSI drives, and it occurred to us that it would be a pretty decent way to back up data. It's a lot easier to restore from disk than tape backup. And with the SCSI drive, we can pretty much plug it in and go."
But for keeping operations running during a disaster, Pennington and others say low tech may be key. For example, he's stocked up on boxes of pencils and legal pads.
John Griffin, vice president for business continuity and emergency preparedness at Verizon Communications, said that among the top tips the company is offering customers is not to rely on cordless phones for communications during the hurricane but instead to distribute phones that can work during a power outage. He also pointed out that laptop computers will also be able to function over Digital Subscriber Line