"Melendez learned a lesson that would help his business during the next storm, that disaster preparedness includes being able to communicate with people when the emergency is over. He quickly signed up with an online messaging service – and got to use it two weeks later when Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico. “The amount of damage was a situation we had never had before here on the island,” Melendez says. But because he was now able to communicate with employees, he could determine how they were, arrange to meet with those able to get to the office and let customers know Wovenware was working despite the widespread devastation and lack of power and resources. Small businesses in the United States have already contended this summer with earthquakes in Southern California and Hurricane Barry in the Gulf Coast and Midwest, and the most intense portions of the Atlantic hurricane and Western wildfire seasons are still ahead. But many owners don’t prepare for potentially devastating natural disasters, leaving them to learn during a crisis what they should have done differently. And even companies that do plan can be unprepared for the unique circumstances of a particular disaster – no owner in New Orleans could have predicted they’d be unable to operate for months, even years, after Hurricane Katrina turned the city and some of its suburbs into a ghost town in 2005..."