Hurricane Helene unleashed unprecedented devastation across northeastern Tennessee in 2024, with many small businesses and residents affected. Now, the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency wants to make sure small business owners have all the tools necessary to make disasters’ impact as small as possible.
TEMA held a launch party for its new ReadyTN Business Program at Reading Rock Books in Dickson on Tuesday, Sep. 16. TEMA Non-Governmental Partnerships Manager and ReadyTN Program Coordinator Kate Amaral and Reading Rock Books owner Angela Redden discussed the many facets of the new program.
According to a press release from TEMA, ReadyTN is “a free initiative designed to help businesses of all sizes and sectors strengthen their preparedness and resilience. This flexible, four-week program equips businesses with practical tools
to prepare for disruptions. Upon completion, participants earn the designation of a Certified ReadyTN Business. Certified
businesses gain access to exclusive resources, timely severe weather updates, and priority recovery outreach and support.”
The program is free, and business owners can complete it at their own pace. Included in the training is receiving a risk assessment, maintaining proper insurance coverage and preserving and storing proper business documentation. Those who successfully complete the training will receive a certificate from TEMA.
Amaral said that of the three-and-half-million members of Tennessee’s workforce, two million are employed by small businesses, so when small businesses are negatively impacted by any kind of disaster, that trickles down to the employees who call Tennessee home.
“This is a basic program, but as we go along and they’re a certified ready TN business, we’ll send out a monthly newsletter with additional opportunities for preparedness, tips, trainings or whether we or some of our partners are hosting a webinar when we have severe weather that could be coming in and affecting our state. We would have some proactive communication to them about, ‘Hey, this is what we’re anticipating. Here’s some last minute steps that you need to take.’ The big benefit I would say is that once you’re certified a ReadyTN business, if your county is struck by a disaster, then we’re going to be in immediate contact with you and walking you through those recovery steps immediately after a disaster for a number of benefits. Not only does it help that small business owner and their employees, but it also helps the economy return to normal, which we know the biggest step toward a community recovering fast is to get the economy open,” Amaral said.
The most pervasive type of disaster in Tennessee, according to Amaral, is flooding, because not only does it affect every area of the state, but it’s also the most difficult to recover from in terms of cost and time. “You may have to, if you’ve got four feet of floodwater, you’ve got to clean everything out and then you’ve got to dry everything out, and then you’ve got to do mold remediation, and then it’s about putting everything back together, so it’s a long, long disaster. It’s also very common as places are developing more as well, we’re seeing more urban flooding particularly,” Amaral.
According to the US Chamber Foundation, one in four businesses have to close a year after some kind of disaster. Seeing how the floods of the last several years devastated so many communities and families, and given what a large percentage of people depend on small businesses for their livelihood in Tennessee, Amaral said she wants to see small businesses property equipped to turn those disaster recovery tides.
“That’s really the inspiration for this program is because in Tennessee, we know the majority of our workforce is employed by small business. We know that small business is what drives our economy. It’s about 39 billion a year statewide, and so we want Tennesseeans to be successful, and we want to be able to give them the tools that they need to prepare, but also walk with them hand-in-hand after they’re affected so that a person who’s sunk their life savings into a business doesn’t go under because there’s a disaster. We want to be able to help keep that business open,” Amaral said.
TEMA held the program’s launch at Reading Rock Books from a suggestion from TEMA intergovernmental Partnerships Manager Austin Travis, who, according to Amaral, is a Dickson native and said it was his favorite bookstore. This began the conversation for Redden about disaster preparedness. “I’m excited that the state has seen, or I feel like the state sees us. All these small business owners are working hard to provide jobs, to provide culture in our communities, but we don’t have the resources all the time that we need. I’m just thankful for the opportunity and that it does make me feel better as a business owner to know that I have the support of the state and that they put this together for them to be able to go in, learn and become better at what I’m doing. If I have a question, I can call on ’em and say, ‘Hey, can you help me?’” Redden said.
Amaral said emergency preparedness is a conversation everyone needs to have. “It’s not just a conversation between TEMA and a business, but business owners and their employees, business owners and business owners, between chambers of commerce, so that everybody can learn from each other in that community-type environment, and we can come through it all as a community together,” Amaral said.
For more information about ReadyTN, visit
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