Planning for wildfire evacuation as a business

Why wildfire planning is different

Many continuity plans assume a short outage at a single site. Wildfire evacuations can be different. Whole communities may be ordered to leave with only hours of notice, as happened in Fort McMurray in 2016 and Jasper in 2024. Staff may be scattered across the province, focused on their families and unable to return for days or weeks.

In that situation, the business continues only if people can work from wherever they end up, using systems that do not depend on the office being open. Planning for wildfire therefore overlaps with planning for remote work and cloud services, but it also requires decisions that must be made well before smoke appears on the horizon.

Get data out of the building

If your critical data lives only on a server in your office, an evacuation can cut you off from it entirely, and a fire can destroy it. Move essential files and email to cloud services where practical, and make sure any remaining on-premises systems have backups stored outside the region, not in a second building down the street that could be affected by the same fire.

Test that you can restore those backups and run key applications without the office. A backup you have never restored is an assumption, not a plan. Your IT provider should be able to walk through a restore with you and estimate how long it would take to bring each system back.

Make people mobile

Staff who may need to work during an evacuation should have laptops, not desktops, along with chargers and any required peripherals. Make sure every person can sign in to email and key systems from outside the office, and that multi-factor authentication is not tied to an office phone or a device that will be left behind.

Keep an up-to-date contact list outside your normal systems, including personal phone numbers and alternate email addresses. Agree on how you will check in with staff and communicate with customers, and who will make decisions if the owner is unreachable. Review it at the start of each fire season, since phone numbers and roles change over the year.

• Laptops for key staff, taken home during fire season
• MFA on personal phones or hardware keys staff keep with them
• Emergency contact list in print and on personal phones
• Customer communication templates ready to send
• Mobile hotspot or satellite option for internet access

Before you leave and after you return

When an evacuation alert is issued through Alberta Emergency Alert or local authorities, follow official instructions first. People's safety comes before equipment. If there is time, take laptops and portable drives, shut down on-premises equipment properly and confirm that the latest backup has completed and been copied offsite. Insurance claims may require photos, so document conditions first.

When you are allowed to return, do not simply power everything back on. Smoke, ash, heat and water from firefighting can damage electronics, and power fluctuations are common as utilities are restored. Have equipment inspected, check backups and data integrity, and expect that some hardware may need replacement before the office is fully operational.

Write it down and practise

Capture your wildfire plan in a short document that covers who does what, what systems are critical, how staff will work remotely and how you will reach customers and suppliers. Store copies outside your office systems so they are available during an evacuation, including printed copies and copies on key staff members' phones.

Review the plan before each fire season and run a simple exercise, such as having everyone work remotely for a day using only the tools they would have during an evacuation. That exercise quickly reveals gaps, such as missing chargers, inaccessible applications or a critical file that only exists on one desktop in the office.