Like many Valley business owners, Alan Farber will never forget where he was on Jan. 17, 1994 – the day of the Northridge earthquake. “I lived in the 818, but I was in China when the quake happened,” he recalled. “I couldn’t reach my family. It was incredibly difficult not to know what was going on.” More than 60 people died and 9,000 were injured in the magnitude 6.7 earthquake. The impact on Valley area businesses was estimated at around $6.4 billion, according to a 1996 report by the Lusk Center Research Institute at USC. As many as 30 percent of companies in the Valley left in the disaster’s wake, the report found. Farber is determined to help businesses avoid the same fate when the next quake hits. The key is communication, he believes – and his West Hills telecommunications company, AdaptConn Inc., has a solution. Called the “TelCal” kit, it is a portable satellite system designed to keep businesses on the grid when telephone lines are on the ground. The pack includes one satellite phone; a broadband global area network, or BGAN, terminal manufactured by British telecommunications firm Inmarsat; and a rechargeable solar-powered battery and a carrying case. It retails at $4,000, not including a $1,500 annual fee for satellite access. Additional satellite phones can be purchased from AdaptConn for $250 apiece. During an emergency, calls cost between 70 and 80 cents a minute. Businesses should view the cost like an insurance policy, Farber explained. “I tell them, ‘If you don’t do this, after the event you will be sorry,’” he added. Convincing skeptics The TelCal pack is a miniature version of the larger satellite systems that AdaptConn supplies to government agencies. As many as 10 devices at once can access the internet through the BGAN terminal, a laptop-sized box that sends signals to AdaptConn’s satellite. On the ground the system can connect to devices at distances of up to 150 feet away. “This way, you can set up outside and work inside the building,” Farber said. “It’ll run through one or two walls.” Until recently, Farber’s business was focused primarily on securing government contracts. In addition to equipping emergency responders and public agencies with TelCal kits, AdaptConn also offers large mounted satellite dishes and portable mid-sized phone systems designed to be wheeled around as central communications points. “I’ve always worked with governments, but I realized that from the standpoint of where we’re located physically, there are a large number of companies that are underserved as far as emergency preparedness,” Farber said. Firms like Sony Corp. and Amgen Inc. have whole teams dedicated to maintaining business continuity after a disaster, he explained, while mom-and-pop stores are able to open and close with some flexibility. But small- and mid-sized companies – those with around 200 employees and a few million dollars in sales annually – possess neither the money and manpower to keep operations afloat nor the flexibility to start and stop with ease. “That middle ground makes up not only a huge amount of the tax base in this county, but also the employment base,” Farber said. An ever-growing reliance on technology and increasingly globalized workforce compounds the problem, he added. “People’s supply chains are all over the world now,” Farber explained. “If you have an order (from a foreign supplier) that’s about to go on a boat to Los Angeles, you want to stop that as quickly as you can.” Yet despite the risks, convincing business owners to purchase TelCal kits has proven challenging, Farber said. Part of the problem is that potential customers simply cannot envision life without smartphones. Also, spending $4,000 for a someday-in-the-future earthquake is a tough risk calculation. “People look at their phone and think that it’s never going to stop working,” he said. The same holds true for disaster preparedness in general, explained Ines Pearce, chief executive of Pearce Global Partners Inc. Her company works with businesses and organizations of all sizes to help them implement plans for worst-case scenarios. “It’s a common problem because businesses don’t think about disasters until it’s too late,” Pearce said. Communications is one of the fastest and easiest elements to break down during a disaster, even internally, she said. “Unless they’ve been through the experience or they’ve seen something close by that impacts them, most feel like it’s going to happen to somebody else,” Pearce added. Planning for disaster Is a $4,000 satellite communications kit the solution? That depends on the business, Pearce said. The most important element is to have a plan. “An element of that is crisis communication,” she said. “For a lot of businesses, it’s an easy place to start.” For medium-sized companies with hundreds of employees and out-of-state or overseas partners, the TelCal kit may be a wise choice. But the security it offers will be of little value if businesses don’t plan ahead and regularly check the equipment for readiness, Farber said. “We insist that people take it out quarterly – even governments have to be pushed to do this – but make sure it works every time you do it,” he said. “We come back and train people multiple times.” That’s the advantage of purchasing AdaptConn’s product rather than a similar one from the internet, Farber added. Preparation is part of the deal.