Every time I watch television I see ads which depict the most wonderful places to shop. One particular ad depicts a home improvement superstore full of friendly, helpful, knowledgeable staff in every department. The ad goes on to explain how this staff is there to assist you in every facet of home improvement and repair. One day I needed a part for my kitchen faucet and a new cordless drill, so I set out for that store.

Upon arrival the only person who acknowledged my presence during my first ten minutes in the store was the “greeter” who was trying to get me to fill out a credit card application. The staff who were standing in the plumbing aisle shuffled me to the next person who “knows more about this department.” After talking to three associates and spending fifteen more minutes searching, I finally bumped into the fabled “plumbing expert’ who would know just what part I needed. Unfortunately he was new and the “other guy” who “knows all this stuff” was not here today. He pointed me to where I could look for the part on my own and “maybe be able to figure out what is needed.”

After wandering around the store for thirty minutes, I left empty handed and frustrated. I ended up buying my part and the drill at the small local hardware store.

Why is it that companies paint such a wonderful picture in their ads only to disappoint the customer when they come to shop? It is not only the big box stores who do this. I recently read an ad for a local home heating company claiming that they “provide superior personalized service.” This was the same company who gave me the runaround when I first tried to set up my fuel contract. They told me “the person who handles that is too busy” to take my call and to “call back tomorrow morning when they might have more time.” In that case, I went with one of the “big boys” and I have been very pleased with the service.

Either big or small, my point is that if you say it in your ad make sure you can and are delivering it 100% of the time or else you are setting your current and potential customers up for a big disappointment. A disappointed customer may or may not come back, but either way they will talk and tell everyone about their negative experience.

Wouldn’t it be better to exceed the expectations you set out in your advertising and have the resulting word of mouth advertising be positive? As the line in the movie Field of Dreams goes, “if you build it, they will come” - if it is extraordinary, they will tell their friends. After all, word of mouth advertising is the most effective form of promotion, especially if it expands the reach of your paid advertising.

Companies must remember that the first rule of setting expectations in your advertising is - If they come, have you built it?

Dave Lubelczyk is president of IMAGEidentity, LTD which helps organizations achieve success by building advocacy through brand development and organizational development. He can be reached by phone: 508-259-9016 or at http://www.imageidentity.com

Archives of Minding Your Own Brand articles are available at http://www.mindingyourownbrand.com

© 2005 Dave Lubelczyk, All rights reserved.

Recent legislation in Congress may make it even more difficult for seniors to qualify for government-paid long-term care coverage. If you don’t take action now, you may be setting you and your family up for a Long Term Nightmare!

This problem is so potentially damaging, yet so little understood, I’ve decided to dedicate multiple articles to covering it. In this article, I’ll expose the problem. Future articles will explain possible solutions.

Seniors know the potential cost of long-term care could devastate them financially. The thought of seeing the nest egg they’ve worked years to build evaporate to pay for their care is hard to take. Some seniors seek to find ways to manipulate the system so that they can qualify for government assistance. Others mistakenly believe that Medicare and
Medicaid will pay for their care.

The reason that many feel the government should cover this cost is because Medicare and Medicaid are designed to provide health insurance to those over 65 (MediCARE) or to those who are impoverished (MedicAID). Since the need for care is usually the result of failing health, why shouldn’t it, they reason.

The terms ‘long-term care’ and ’skilled-nursing care’ refer to different needs. Understanding the difference is critical to understanding the problems you and your family may face. Knowing the difference will prevent a false sense of security.

‘Long-term care’ is a generalized term that refers to the assisted care individuals may require in their homes, an assisted-living facility or a nursing home. ‘Skilled-nursing care’ is a specific term used when that assistance must be provided by a licensed or registered nurse.

‘Long-term care’ includes the need for both custodial care and skilled-nursing care. ‘Skilled-nursing care’ does NOT include the need for custodial care. That’s the issue that creates the Long Term Nightmare.

For instance, if someone needs assistance because they can’t bathe, cook or dress themselves, they need custodial care. If someone has dementia and needs to be supervised, that is referred to as custodial care. If someone needs intravenous fluids (IV), they need skilled-nursing care because it cannot be administered by anyone else. Custodial care can be done by a family member. Skilled-nursing care is provided by licensed nurses.

The assistance provided by Medicare to those over 65 is only for skilled-nursing care. Typically this care occurs in a nursing home while the patient recovers from a surgery or illness that required at least a 3-day hospital stay. If the hospital stay didn’t occur, Medicare won’t pay for it. Even then, Medicare will only cover roughly 100 days.

Medicare does NOT provide any coverage when the assistance needed is custodial. Those costs must be paid entirely by the individual and/or their family. Medicare will not pay for stays in an assisted-living facility.

For the impoverished who qualify, Medicaid will cover nursing home costs. But the number of Medicaid beds is limited and recipients may face long waiting periods to get into such a facility.

Sometimes Medicaid will cover assisted living facilities and home health care, which includes custodial care. But these benefits are harder to receive reimbursement for. Rules and benefits vary from state to state. The bottom line for those depending on Medicaid is that you will be left with few options and limited care.

The greatest need for long-term care as we age is often custodial in nature. At some point, we are all likely to need help with our medications, cooking and cleaning. Worse, we may be suffering from the chronic effects of a long term illness. Even though we may not be able to care for ourselves as a result, Medicare will not pay for any help unless it requires a skilled nurse. They will, however, cover hospice care for terminally ill patients.

Many families find themselves caught in the nightmare of having to provide the care that isn’t covered by insurance or the government. This problem will not go away-the government is likely to cover even less care in the future. Take action now.

In a future article, I will talk about the long-term care coverage provided by Medicaid and what is required to qualify for it. Then I will outline steps you can take to avoid a Long-Term Nightmare.

Have a financial question? Send me an email and I’ll personally respond, free of charge. Go to http://www.guardingyourwealth.com and click on ‘Ask Jeff’.

In addition to being a nationally syndicated columnist and Certified Financial Planning Practitioner, Mr. Voudrie provides personal, private money management services to clients nationwide.

Nationally-syndicated financial columnist and Certified Financial Planner® Jeffrey Voudrie provides personal, in-depth money management services and advice to select private clients throughout the USA. He’ll answer your financial question - FREE at http://www.guardingyourwealth.com

Firstly it is useful to understand the differences between digital and analog audio. This applies to any recordings, not just to recordings of voice for transcription. Analog machines, such as tape cassette recorders, record sounds as wave forms, the way that the sound occurs in nature. Digital machines record sound by taking samples of the signal and storing them as bits of data, in the same way as a computer stores information. Because of the way the sounds are recorded digital recordings have a higher signal-to-noise ratio. Noise here refers to any background noise but when comparing analog to digital recordings it really refers to recorder-induced noise such as ‘tape hiss’. So the quality of the digital recording is better. That alone is a good reason to consider using digital recording rather than analogue tapes!

There are other good reasons though. Not least of these is the fact that copies of analog recordings deteriorate in quality, so sending a copy of your master tape to a transcriptionist can result in a poor quality transcription, because the quality of the audio is poor. Digital recordings can be copied again and again with no deterioration in quality because all that’s being copied is a series of bits of data.

Of course when using digital recordings you do need to check that your transcriptionist can transcribe from the file type you are using, or convert it. Most transcriptionists will be able to transcribe from any standard analog cassette and many can transcribe from micro and mini cassettes and video. So long as they have the relevant tape transcription machine they can transcribe the tape. Not so, unfortunately, with digital.

Most digital audio file types are compressed and a codec (the algorithm used to reduce the number of bites contained in large files by eliminating redundant data) and the transcriptionist or transcription software will need access to the codec that has produced the compressed file. However, this is often not an issue as PCs and many types of transcription software come with a variety of codecs already installed. It is certainly important to check with your transcriptionist though that they can work with your file type. Please see my separate article on digital file types for transcription for more information on this.

Digital file types are also easily manipulated and this can be useful when recording for transcription. If there are parts of the file you do not want transcribed it is a fairly simple matter to remove those parts and only send the transcriptionist the parts that should be transcribed. Alternatively, because a digital recording indicates where you are in it second by second, you can send the transcriptionist instructions such as ‘transcribe between 3 minutes 20 seconds and 60 minutes 10 seconds.’ This does not work on analog media as, even if you and your transcriptionist both have tape players with minute counters, the level of accuracy is quite poor.

Another huge benefit from the point of view of the transcription itself is that in a transcription from a digital recording your transcriptionist can mark the precise time that an inaudible word occurs. If that time is 3 minutes and 22 seconds then you can go back to your copy of the recording and almost instantly find 3 minutes and 22 seconds, play the word, and hopefully fill in the blank. With an analog recording on tape the transcriptionist can mark an inaudible word but it’s not possible to note the time with any degree of accuracy and you will either need to flick back and forth through the tape to find it or listen through the whole recording.

There are various ways to make a digital recording. Perhaps the commonest when recording for transcription is onto a card, in much the same way as a digital camera records pictures onto a card. The recorded files can then be transferred onto your computer and sent to your transcriptionist via email (if compressed), FTP, file sharing sites or, in some cases, a file-sending box located on the transcriptionist’s website.

Minidiscs have an excellent sound quality but many transcriptionists are unable to transcribe from them as the data needs to be transferred to PC first and then usually converted for use in transcription programmes.

DVDs and CDs also need to be converted before use in transcription software.

Recording can also be done directly onto a computer hard-drive using various types of software and an external microphone. However, when conducting interviews the presence of a laptop and large microphone might be rather intrusive.

However the recording is made and stored, it should be possible, with the right equipment and software, to convert the file into something you can download onto your PC and send to your transcriptionist by one of the methods mentioned above. So digital recordings not only improve on quality but can save you time and money. Recordings can be ‘instantly’ transferred to the transcriptionist instead of posting audio cassettes, you save money on postage costs to and from your transcriptionist and a better quality transcription will cost less to transcribe as it will take less time.

All in all, in a comparison between digital and analogue recording for transcription, digital recordings come out well ahead.

Penguin Transcription (http://www.penguin-transcription.co.uk), part of Penguin Office Services, offers an affordable transcription service by tailoring each quote to the exact requirements of the client. The more information the client can provide us with, and the better the quality of the recording for transcription, the more affordable the transcription service will be. Why not visit our site and fill in an enquiry form at http://www.penguin-transcription.co.uk/PTS_enquiry_form.html to receive a quote for your transcription requirements.

This article is copyright, Anne Hickley, 2007.

It is estimated that nearly 90% of all teenagers will experience some degree of acne in their lifetime. Additionally, one out of every four adults will also develop acne. Is there anything that can be done using natural skin care to avoid this unfortunate skin condition? Well, yes and no. While there is no perfect natural beauty product cure for acne, there are acne skin care measures you can take to aid in prevention.

First and foremost, you need to practice smart natural skin care cleaning methods every day. This includes washing skin with a natural beauty product like a gentle, alcohol free cleanser. Choose the best skin care product for you when you find a cleanser at the store. Smart cleaning methods also entail cleaning your skin with your fingertips, and not with a washcloth. Lastly, it is important to note that you should NEVER scrub your skin, this will only make acne worse.

The second thing you need to do is avoid potentially skin care harmful products. The best way to do this is to use only organic beauty product lines. Toners, exfoliators, and astringents can all contain alcohol that further aggravates your skin. Most organic beauty product lines do not contain harmful ingredients. Read organic beauty labels before you buy, and stay away from any organic beauty products containing sensitive ingredients.

Next, you need to make sure that you do not pick or pop pimples as part of your skin care regimen. This is not recommended for several reasons. Popping pimples actually serves to delay healing time; and it also increases the likelihood of scarring.

Women and men both have unique acne skin care concerns. Women who use makeup and sunscreen need to choose organic skin care product lines that are labeled noncomedogenic. This is crucial, as these organic skin care product lines contain ingredients that will not clog pores. This, in turn, makes it easier to maintain healthy skin. This can also be a form of anti aging skin care, as most of these anti aging skin care products will help you avoid the lines that others will cause.

On the flip side, men have to be mindful when shaving. Choose razors and shaving creams that are made for sensitive skin, and always take your time! Fast or aggressive shaving can lead to further outbreaks.

Following these acne skin care tips should help decrease the occurrence of acne in your life. If you still fail to see results, consult a dermatologist who may be able to offer you the best skin care product for your face.

Keep YOURSELF looking and feeling great with these great FREE
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Modest ladies formalwear for all occasions now being offered on e-commerce sites all over the web. A growing trend in the last few years has been the desire for a more modest line of formalwear for young ladies and women alike. And the beauty of it all is that manufacturers are listening.

After hearing these requests from a number of customers, manufacturers have put together a line of modest formalwear to be worn for prom, cocktail parties and other special occasions. They also offer a line of modest bridesmaid dresses and even wedding gowns. Styles and lengths may vary but the idea of having a line of formalwear to meet the needs of customers who prefer modest gowns is always there.

Manufacturers listened to their customers and offered them the type of formalwear they requested. They have heard from several who have thanked them for their effort. Here is a sample of their customers’ comments:

It is hard to find wholesome dresses anymore! We greatly appreciate the classic quality of your garments, and will eagerly review new dresses with sleeves, modest necklines, etc. Thank you for introducing pastel colors more suitable to weddings. J.S./ Middlebury, IN.

On-line shopping has never been easier. You can shop from gowns and dresses of the highest quality, usually at the fraction of cost you would pay in a retail store. The most current styles are available in all the new fabrics and color choices. And, most on-line stores make it very secure for the customer to make payment. Shop from the comfort of your own home and have your purchase delivered straight to your door. What a great way to make your purchases!

I am Sue Gray. I have worked in formalwear for over 20 years. I am presently at http://www.formalwear-outlet.com We manufacture our own line of formalwear and can easily adapt our styles to satisfy any customer’s needs.

You see, there have been a growing number of people who are suffering from weight problems. If you really wish to lose weight, there are a lot of ways to do it.

There are a lot of people who tends to neglect there health, reasons why they suffer from obesity or weight problems. They usually eat whatever they want. They ever don’t find time for physical activity, since they are too busy with their work, which requires them to sit for eight hours in front of the computer. So a lot of people are getting fat, because they tent to neglect their health.

But it doesn’t mean where you are fat, obese or have weight problems, you will jump over the bridge. A big NO, do not lose hope, there are a lot of things to do and ways in order to lose weight, what it really takes is determination and eagerness to lose that unwanted weight.

If you are determined to lose weight, find herbal remedy that can help you lose weight. You can use herbal remedy like hoodia. Actually, hoodia is one of the most popular diet pills that can help you lose weight. It comes with pill form and it can also be in a liquid form, which is best for people who are having difficulties in swallowing tablets.

There are a lot of herbal remedies out in the market, choose which you believe is best for you, but in choosing make sure that it has certification in order for you to know that it will really work effectively and with no harmful side effects.

You can choose and purchase the best herbal remedy you like and add it with your daily regimen. But of course, do not let the herbal remedy works on its own, definitely it can’t be that effective it you won’t help out in this process of losing weight.

If you want to lose weight and be healthy, you have to do something about it. Maintain balance diet is advisable. You have to observe the food you take, better to lessen your calorie intake; this is helpful in losing unwanted fats. Eat the right amount of fruits and vegetables daily. Eating right amount of fruits and vegetables can help you lose weight and can make you healthy and strong.

Another important thing you need to give time is exercise. Walking or jogging, even about 30 minutes each day can be helpful in losing weight and in becoming healthy.

In order to lose weight and be healthy, you can take herbal remedy; add it to your daily regimen, watch your food, lessen the calorie intake, better to take fruits and vegetables each day and proper exercise, all these can help you to lose weight and to be healthy.

As a piece of advice, never neglect the expertise of your doctor. You can consult him and let him know your plans and the herbal remedy you desire to take. Your doctor can give you advice on which herbal remedy that will be best for your losing weight process.

If you are having weight problems, start taking good care of your health. This article mentioned few tips on how to lose weight and to be healthy. So start giving your part in order to lose weight.

Article Author Eliza Maledevic from http://www.Jump2top.com, a SEO Company.Know more about Hoodia Gordinii at
http://www.primeherbal.com/hoodia

If you want to live into your mid-80s or even your 90s, here are three great tips that can get you there.

1. Eat healthy. I love cheeseburgers and fries as much as the next man, but if longevity is you goal, you need to make sure you eat healthy. Load up your diet with fresh fruits and vegetables. Broccoli may not be as much fun as a super-size order of French fries, but it’s rich in antioxidants that can help fight off free radicals. And you know that old homily about “an apple a day.” Well, it’s a good idea still. Ditto, legumes (beans to you), celery, carrots, grapes, lima beans and just about any fresh fruit or vegetable.

2. Exercise regularly. This doesn’t mean you have to spend hours pumping iron, jogging or other forms of cruel and unusual punishment. Instead just walk for 30 minutes every day. Walking is just a great exercise for losing weight, unclogging arteries and keeping joints flexible. In fact, I read one very popular diet book recently that had been featured on a network TV program. It had some good, healthy recipes but the kicker was that you were told to walk 30 minutes a day, seven days a week. Based on my experience, I’m not sure the diet actually would work without that 30-minute walk..

3. Be optimistic about aging. You won’t find this in a lot of the literature on longevity, but experts are beginning to realize that a person’s attitude about aging is almost as important as their attitude about food. In fact, researchers at Yale University and Miami University of Ohio have found that people who view aging positively lived an average of 7.5 years longer than those who saw it negatively. In other words, don’t focus on how badly your joints are creaking or how you just can’t do the things you were able to do when you were 10 or 20 years younger. Concentrate instead on the good things you’ve gained with age such as wisdom and, hopefully, a more mature perspective. You might also try to find older role models who have inspiring pursuits - to remind you of the good things you can do with that extra 7.5 years of life. Finally, you can be optimistic about your life span. The medical technology breakthroughs we have seen to date are nothing vs. the ones that will come in the next 10 years. As a friend of mine is fond of saying, the longer you live, you longer you will live.

For more information on life extension and anti-aging, try visiting http://all-health-data.com/wordpress/, a popular blog that offers life extension tips, advice and resources, including information on the best life extension ideas and products.

Or, if you’d like to know how you can fight illnesses without using powerful prescription drugs, get our free report, “Natural Cures the Pharmaceutical Companies Don’t Want You to Know About” by clicking on http://www.overall-info.com

Douglas Hanna is a successful Webmaster and the author of more than 150 ezine articles on a variety of subjects.

What do you need to run for a customer today to be on time for every customer tomorrow? This is the constant question that sits at the front of every manufacturing scheduler’s mind when they consider at their potential work loads as measured against potential plant capacity. In fact, to provide the all-important consistency of on-time delivery, each work center must be considered individually before the enterprise can be taken as a whole for the purposes of scheduling. In short, proper scheduling technique must employ a mixture of both infinite scheduling that assumes infinite capacity, and finite scheduling that takes real-time factors of capacity loads into consideration. In short, in trying achieve optimal and on-time production results manufacturers endlessly quest for the most efficient ways to control the utilization of their limited resources.

To this end, advanced planning and scheduling (APS) systems have been developed to not only consider such notions as shop floor capacity constraints, but other factors as a make-up of a manufacturers own criteria. As a part of enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, APS is able to scheduling in finite terms to consider such factors as inventory and bill of material constraints, inventory stocking and replenishment levels, and order generation protocols. To this end, in ERP software that operates in a capacity leveling mode, both known and unknown variables are plugged into equations that result in both infinite and finite schedules. This is the flexible beauty of ERP, and it is a powerful scheduling tool for the modern manufacturer.

In a truly integrated ERP operation, scheduling questions such as, “In which work center should we run this production?”, and “When should we promise the delivery for a customer’s order?”, are quickly answered. As it is important to have both backwards and forward scheduling in terms of finite scheduling, a robust ERP software system can see real-time capacity loads for work centers, as well as be able to anticipate bottle-necks or over-capacity loads in particular centers based upon factors such as machine downtime or historic seasonal work flows. To avoid problems, finite operational scheduling of in-coming work orders can then be accomplished at several different levels of plant function such as general machine groups, specific shop floor work centers, or even down to the level of key set-up personnel.

So, whether in the job shop, make-to-order, make-to-stock, or mixed-mode manufacturing operation, both real-time and long-range job scheduling and planning are important management tools to gauge on-going or future work load to capacity ratios. To ease the minds of work order schedulers, a fully integrated ERP scheduling software will bring multiple areas of data to bear in both finite and infinite calculations. With such a powerful tool at the disposal of a manufacturer, the chances for on-time delivery are greatly increased.

http://globalshopsolutions.com/

Dusty Alexander is the President of Global Shop Solutions. Global Shop Solutions is the largest privately held ERP software company in the United States.

Copyright 2007 - Global Shop Solutions. All Rights Reserved Worldwide. Reprint Rights: You may reprint this article as long as you leave all of the links active, do not edit the article in any way, and give the author name credit.

Our nation has just enjoyed one of its most popular annual rituals: the Super Bowl. One can draw many lessons from the drama on the gridiron and all the hoopla surrounding it. But as I watched this year’s spectacle, one thing in particular caught my eye. And what I saw can teach a very valuable lesson about investing.

Why do so many Americans watch the Super Bowl every year, anyway? For the commercials, of course! And every year, companies try to wow us with their outrageous ads, or use the national spotlight to launch their newest product.

This year was no exception, as one famous consumer products company introduced a ground-breaking improvement: a razor with five blades. That’s right, not a razor with four blades, which is so old-fashioned, but one with five, yes, count them, five blades!

Razor blade companies aren’t the only ones trying to sell us on the latest and greatest must-have upgrades. Have you shopped for toothpaste lately? Talk about brand extension!

Why do products that work fine to start with need to be upgraded and improved? There is one reason: sales. If one company comes out with a new improved version, it means that all of its competitors have to also. Otherwise, they might lose sales to the improved version.

These improvements aren’t free. Take a quick look at the cost of a five-blade razor and you realize all these bells and whistles carry a hefty price tag, especially when compared to the ‘old-fashioned’ version.

The same ‘brand extension’ occurs in the financial industry as well. They’re always adding an ‘extra blade’ to their ‘razor’ or ‘micro-cleansing beads’ to their ‘toothpaste’. Annuities are a perfect example.

The first annuity in America was offered in 1759. The first variable annuity was offered by TIAA-CREF in 1952 for use in college retirement programs. The purpose of the variable annuity was to allow a teacher to grow their nest egg during their working years and then convert that growth into a steady income stream when they retired. In effect, they were creating their own pension.

You would have a hard time recognizing that product today. A guaranteed minimum death benefit was introduced in 1980. The guarantee minimum income benefit in 1996, enhance earnings benefits in 2000, the guaranteed minimum withdrawal benefit and the guaranteed minimum account balance in 2002.

With each ‘improvement’ the costs have gone up as well. Whereas variable annuities used to be a low-cost way to create your own pension, now they are bloated, expensive all-things-to-all-people products offering every bell and whistle you can imagine.

The total cost associated with variable annuities can quickly climb to 3% or more with just the basic features-higher if you add all the ‘benefits’. The main purpose of a variable annuity is to provide greater returns then a fixed-annuity. All these costs make that much harder to achieve. Moreover, these costs essentially are transferring a large portion of the growth from your nest egg to the insurance company.

Worse, few of these benefits are ever used. The key selling point of a variable annuity is supposed to be a lifetime income stream, but less than 5% of variable contracts are ever annuitized.

If they are a long-term vehicle designed to save for retirement, why are so many being sold to people already retired? Why are 70 and 80-year olds being sold variable annuities?

I say ‘being sold’ because only 2% of people choose to buy an annuity on their own. The rest are sold by banks, brokers and agents. Could the fact that the commission is so high be a cause?

Call me old-fashioned. I still shave with a two-blade razor. It works well and saves me money. If you want the traditional benefits of a variable annuity, choose the two-blade kind. They are the low-cost, plain vanilla variable annuities sold by companies like Vanguard.

You already know what next year’s Super Bowl advertisement will be: a razor with six blades! And you know what your commission-based advisor will be pushing soon: an investment with another costly feature! Don’t fall for it! Ignore the hype. Find low-cost solutions to your financial goals and keep control of your money

Have a financial question? Send me an email and I’ll personally respond, free of charge. Go to www.guardingyourwealth.com and click on “Ask Jeff”.

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In addition to being a nationally syndicated columnist and Certified Financial Planning Practitioner, Mr. Voudrie provides personal, private money management services to clients nationwide.

Nationally-syndicated financial columnist and Certified Financial Planner® Jeffrey Voudrie provides personal, in-depth money management services and advice to select private clients throughout the USA. He’ll answer your financial question - FREE at http://www.guardingyourwealth.com

In late October 2003 the state of California was slammed with the worst wildfire that it had experienced to that date. Twenty people where killed, and damage to local communities and infrastructure was extensive.

The wild fire extended from the Mexican boarder north to the suburbs of Los Angeles. Hundreds of thousands of acres of forest where destroyed. Local vegetation and animal life suffered very large losses and many communities where effected by the disaster. Thousands of different species where decimated by the fire. It is expected that certain of the larger species like elk, and deer, may take several years to repopulate. Even the local salmon stock feeding in the streams running through the burning acreage suffered losses from the fire.

Damage to the area was devastating. 20 people died including one of the fire fighters. Two thousand seven hundred homes and buildings where destroyed and many businesses had to close. This wildfire was to become the most expensive fire to ever hit the United States. Damage to phone lines, and local utilities caused major outages. People were displaced from their homes and many had to leave the state to find accommodation elsewhere during the clean-up period.

The social impact of this wild fire was a bit unexpected. The personal losses incurred by local residences and the tremendous losses to local wildlife resulted in a push by the United States federal government to pass the “Healthy Forests” bill which allocated seven hundred and sixty million dollars to the urban interface between urban cities and forest areas.

The economic impact of this wildfire was catastrophic. One and a quarter to two billion dollars in damages resulted from the fire, making it the most costly wildfire in American history. Losses to businesses and local municipalities amounted to millions of dollars in lost revenues, not to mention the cost of replacing or restoring lost information, and resulted in hardship for many local area residents. The logging industry, of course, took a major financial hit.

Not all natural disasters kill thousands of people, yet most will spread their effects over huge areas and cause massive damage to our fragile and over-used infrastructure. Telephone lines and utilities like electricity, water and even sewage are easily interrupted. Businesses are not able to operate without these simple services. Lost data means lost revenues. Even something as simple as a forest fire can have a huge social and economic influence on our lives. In this case it appears the best offense is a great defense. Always be prepared.

You can never be too prepared when disaster strikes. Protect yourself from data loss with online backup from Global Data Vault. Avoid downtime, revenue loss and angry customers with
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