Hurricane Nate Makes Landfall - Now a Tropical Storm.

Hurricane Nate makes landfalls in Louisiana and Mississippi with storm surge driven flooding in some coastal areas.

Sunday, 08 October 2017 07:00:00 -05:00



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Hurricane Nate Update

Hurricane Nate made landfall in Louisiana at the mouth of the Mississippi River Saturday evening around 7 PM CDT and again near Biloxi, Mississippi early Sunday morning around 12:30 PM CDT. The storm is the first hurricane to make landfall in Mississippi since Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

After moving inland on a north-northeast trajectory, the storm weakening as expected. Overnight, the National Hurricane Center downgraded Hurricane Nate to Tropical Storm strength. Forecasters expect Nate to rapidly weaken as it moves further inland towards Alabama. Tropical Storm winds are expected over the area currently identified by ContactRelief and later tonight in parts of northeastern Georgia.

A map of the U.S. and Gulf of Mexico shows the
		  wind speed probabilities for Hurricane Nate as it moves through Mississippi and into Alabama.
Figure 1: Wind Speed Probablities for Hurricane Nate (Courtesy: National Hurricane Center).

Hurricane Nate's storm surge caused localized flooding in low-lying coastal areas including parts of Jackson County, Mississippi and sections of downtown Mobile, Alabama. Nate also caused power outages in Mississippi overnight but the state's Emergency Management office now reports only 8,000 are without power. Mississippi's power outages were concentrated in the eastern portion of the state where the winds were the highest. Overall, the damage from Nate was lighter than expected in most areas. In Alabama, approximately 60,000 people are without power with most concentrated in the Mobile, Alabama area.

Hurricane Season is Not Over

We still have 54 days until the end of hurricane season (November 30th). This has been an extremely active hurricane season and this may not be the last storm to make its way to the U.S. If you are a risk manager or contact center operator, you need to act now to have continued access to ContactRelief's recommendations.

Why You Must Also Prepare for Man-Made Disasters - The Las Vegas Mass Shooting

Contact centers need to be prepared to act quickly and decisively not only for forecasted events like hurricanes, but also for man-made disasters that cannot be predicted. On Sunday night in Las Vegas, over 50 people were killed and over 500 injured in a senseless mass shooting at a local music festival.

ContactRelief issued a recommendation to suspend contact to accounts with zip codes surrounding the Las Vegas Strip on October 2nd at 12:30 AM PDT, a little more than 2 hours after the incident began, and expanded this contact suspension recommendation at 4:30 AM PDT to include all of the county surrounding Las Vegas (Clark County, Nevada) as more details became known.

If you are like most companies, you can't afford the staff to perform the around the clock monitoring required to act promptly, the management of multiple concurrent disasters, and information gathering it takes to know when and where to suspend and resume contact for all types of possible events. But why bother when ContactRelief has this and more for less than $300 per month.

Why You Must Act Now

Our offer of free access to our service will expire soon. We provide the only service specially designed for contact centers and focused on all aspects of the customer experience during natural and man-made disasters. We can not only tell you when and where to suspend contact, but when and why you should resume contact, and how you can improve your brand image by the actions you take during these periods. Because before starting ContactRelief we owned and operated large contact centers, we understand your business perspective, and our recommendations are designed to help you deliver a great customer experience while still enabling you to achieve your other objectives.

Don't Delay

The next disaster is on its way. Become a ContactRelief subscriber and keep your company protected from disaster. Our full recommendations consist of the areas to be suspended and the list of zip codes covering these areas. For as little as $300 per month your company can quickly implement a solution that protects your company and its customers. As we say at ContactRelief, "It's just smart business."

Contact sales@contactrelief.com for more information.

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