ALEXANDRIA, Va. – On this week’s episode of Convenience Matters, “Do You Have an Emergency Action Plan?” NACS hosts Jeff Lenard and Carolyn Schnare discuss the American Red Cross Ready Rating program that helps retailers and businesses prepare for emergencies and natural disasters.

“Ready Rating is a free program that helps businesses, schools and organizations become prepared for disasters and other emergencies,” said Cristen Hodgers, the American Red Cross National Ready Rating spokesperson. “The reason this is so important, especially for smaller to medium-sized businesses … is because 40% of businesses that are impacted by a disaster never reopen.”

By utilizing the free Ready Rating program, convenience stores potentially can increase the odds that they will recover from a disaster or emergency. “It’s a one-of-a-kind tool with resources and information for evaluating their current level of preparedness and improving their ability to withstand disaster, maintain operation, protect lives and property,” Hodgers said. “It’s a wonderful tool whether you’re taking your first step toward preparedness or if you have a fully functioning emergency management program.”

What makes Ready Rating so valuable is that it’s not a cookie-cutter response—the program’s designed to provide a customized response based on the retailer’s answers to a series of questions. “The system will generate a next-steps report, tailored to answers you give,” Hodgers said. Then it provides resources and suggested tools to help a retailer to “immediately get started with improving your preparedness steps.”

The program covers a wide variety of situations, including natural disasters and active shooters. For example, “it makes it easy to pick and choose which disaster drills are most beneficial for your business,” Hodgers said. For more information, visit the American Red Cross Ready Rating program.

NACS has many resources to assist retailers in disaster preparedness, relief and recovery. In addition, our coverage of the aftermath of 2017 Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria recently won a writing award from Association Media & Publishing. In our articles, we discussed how the convenience industry aided their communities in times of disaster.

Each week a new Convenience Matters episode is released. The podcast can be downloaded on iTunes, Google Play and other podcast apps, and at www.conveniencematters.com. Episodes have been downloaded by listeners more than 50,000 times in more than 80 countries.