As Hurricane Season Begins, MessageOne Survey Reveals 85% of Americans Do Not Anticipate Disaster or Emergency; Survey Begs Question: Are Americans as Safe as We Think We Are?

AUSTIN, Texas -- With hurricane season kicking off, and following a tumultuous year in 2005 (tsunamis, hurricanes, war, terrorist threats and recent pandemic flu warnings), approximately 85% of Americans do not anticipate their own town or city being impacted by a disaster or emergency this season, according to a survey sponsored by MessageOne. The recent survey of 1,127 Americans was conducted by Opinion Research Corp., an independent research company.

Even in the hurricane-ravaged southeast, where the possibility of disaster rated highest, 57% of survey respondents thought their home towns were safe, while only 43% anticipated some impact in their region in 2006. Other regions of the U.S., (West, Midwest, and the Northeast), averaged only 10% of respondents predicting some disaster or emergency in 2006.

According to Satin Mirchadani, President and CEO of MessageOne, a leading disaster recovery and business continuity firm, "The results beg the question -- are Americans as safe as we think we are, or are we just living with a false sense of security? Our experience working with hundreds of companies after the 2005 hurricane season reinforces the notion that, even if you don't expect a crisis, it really does pay to be prepared."

Forecasting experts are predicting another intense year for hurricane regions again in 2006. "We foresee another very active Atlantic basin tropical cyclone season in 2006," states a report from a well known weather forecasting team including long-time forecasting guru William Gray of Colorado State University. The team's 2006 forecast calls for 17 named tropical storms; an average season has 9.6. The report also calculates an 81% chance that at least one major hurricane will hit the U.S. coast in 2006.

Business Disaster Preparedness Unclear

In another survey question, respondents were asked if they felt their company was prepared in the event of a disaster or emergency. The survey showed Americans were almost evenly split in terms of their feelings of safety in a crisis situation at the workplace or on the job. Fifty two percent said they felt their place of employment was totally prepared or well prepared, while 48% said they felt their workplaces were not prepared or not at all prepared for a crisis or emergency.

Michael Osterman, a leading business continuity industry analyst, is not surprised at the data. "The tide is slowly turning and businesses are finally beginning to catch up with disaster preparedness in the workplace; however, there is still a long way to go as we have seen this past year with Katrina and other hurricanes and disasters. Business leaders need to take a good, hard look at their emergency preparedness plans and make sure they are updated, tested and ready to execute."

Technology Solutions Bridge Gap in Crisis

In the case a disaster or emergency did take place, the survey also showed that people rely heavily on technology to keep in touch with their place of work, colleagues, clients and customers remotely. Cell phones and email were the technologies that ranked highest in what people would rely on most to maintain business remotely -- with cell phones at 47% and email at 36%. Regular landline phones were only chosen by 13% and fax and word processing were so low they were statistically not significant.

About MessageOne

MessageOne (www.messageone.com), based in Austin, Texas, is the fastest growing business continuity company. MessageOne's suite of managed services includes its Email Management Services (EMS)(TM) offering that includes Email Continuity, Email Archive, BlackBerry Continuity, Email Security, Email Recovery and Email Encyrption. In addition, MessageOne delivers communications and application availability services with AlertFind(TM), the leading enterprise emergency notification and escalation platform; and OneSwitch(TM), the only solution to provide automated one button failover service for Windows applications. More than 1000 customers depend on MessageOne for its award-winning managed services delivered from a global network of DR data centers.