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Yesterday was definitely one very weird day. The early morning light was decidedly different and the birds around here that usually make quite a racket every morning were rather quiet and then at 8.30 we got our first tsunami warning.

For Steve who always works from home that wasn't such a big deal. Our house is well inland and up on a hill but I was working down at the shop where we look straight out the front windows and onto the water. But no one actually knew for sure that there was a tsunami coming and there was really no way of telling until about 9.30 when it would make it's first contact with the coastline at a spot well to the north.

So we kind of went into limbo for about an hour. We watched the reports on the Net, we listened to the radio updates and almost held our breath. Beaches were closed up and down the coast, hospitals implemented their emergency plans, schools and shops in low coastal areas were closed and while some people took some precautions others were wandering around as if nothing was going to happen.

Those people either hadn't heard the warnings, they hadn't been watching television or listening to the radio, or if they had they just didn't think it could possibly happen.

Fortunately by about 10am it was obvious that the tsunami wasn't coming this way (although it did do a lot of damage to some parts of the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea) and we all tried to return to normal. But somehow it was rather difficult to get settled after that and I for one found myself spending a lot of time looking out the front window.

Since then it's been interesting to see the reaction of other people around this town. A lot of people took the warning very seriously and moved to higher ground while others thought it would never happen and stayed put. Those who did think that way are now laughing at those who took precautions but is that really a reasonable response to a threat that could have so easily been very real?

We were certainly prepared to evacuate to higher ground if the tidal wave had hit the coast further north (it would have taken another 30 minutes to come this far south) because we would much rather be safe than dead. However for those who weren't prepared to accept that a disaster could be about to happen the consequences could have been extreme.

I suppose I should be surprised that there were people who were prepared to think that the worst couldn't happen but I'm not. I see those people in this business all the time; a disaster that they know is going to occur strikes and they're just not prepared. Instead of being able to recover and go on with their business they're left in a position where recover is almost impossible.

Take the hard drive on your computer for example. You do realize don't you that it is going to fail? You do realize don't you that the failure is inevitable?

If you don't realize that then let me tell you that every hard drive on every computer is going to fail at some stage. There is no doubt about it ... it will happen. So are you prepared?

Are you doing regular backups of all your important data? If you're not backing up your important data then you're flirting with disaster just as those people yesterday who were claiming that the tsunami was never going to happen.

But your home hard drive is only part of the equation. What about the hard drive on your server? Are you backing that up on a regular basis or having your host back it up regularly?

You mightn't think that's necessary if you have your sites mirrored on your home computer but if you're using any form of content management system and not running a cron job back to your home computer on a regular basis you will have data on your server that you won't have on your home computer.

If the hard drive on your server dies so does all the data that you haven't backed up.

And disasters don't just happen to hard drives. Motherboards fail too and replacing those can be an expensive exercise so are you budgeting for equipment failures? If you're not how will you have the money to pay to have your equipment failures repaired?

And what about all those other things that can ... and do ... go wrong? Have you thought about what you would do to recover from those disasters? Think beyond your computer and your server and look at all those areas in your business where you are vulnerable. Do you have a fall-back position for any of those?

It might sound crazy to be suggesting that you need to think about any of these things. You might think that they will never happen to you ... and you could be right. But disasters have a habit of happening at the worst possible times and those who survive are those who are prepared.