The 72-Hour Rule: What Happens When Staff Can't Reach Work After a Disaster

The First 72 Hours Are the Breaking Point

Most business continuity plans focus on systems, data, and facilities. Few account for the human logistics of getting employees from their homes to their workplaces when the normal routes don't exist anymore. The first 72 hours after a major disaster determine whether a business stabilizes or spirals. And in those first three days, staffing is often the weakest link.

Insurance policies often include waiting periods of up to 72 hours before business interruption coverage kicks in. Disaster Unemployment Assistance programs require employees to be unable to work due to disaster conditions. Louisiana state law specifically references a 72-hour return-to-work window for first responders. This 72-hour threshold shows up repeatedly in disaster response frameworks because it represents the critical window where temporary inconvenience becomes operational failure.

What Your Staff Actually Faces After a Disaster

During Hurricane Helene, 30 employee homes were reported as lost or severely damaged in just one organization's North Carolina operations. Roads in western North Carolina remained flooded and impassable for weeks. Natural gas and water service went out at multiple facilities. The city of Asheville lost water access for over 50 days. These aren't abstract planning scenarios. They're the actual conditions employees navigated while employers waited for them to show up.

The Texas A&M Transportation Institute's 2025 Urban Mobility Report found that American commuters lost the equivalent of nearly eight full workdays to traffic congestion in 2024 under normal conditions. National congestion costs topped $269 billion per year. Now add flooded roads, downed trees, traffic signal outages, and evacuation routes running in reverse. Normal 27-minute commutes become impossible journeys. Employees aren't being stubborn or disloyal. They're stuck.

The Legal Reality of Paying People Who Can't Show Up

The Fair Labor Standards Act doesn't require employers to pay non-exempt employees for hours they didn't work during a disaster closure. If your hourly employee couldn't make it in because roads were flooded, federal law doesn't mandate payment for that missed time. But exempt salaried employees operate under different rules. If a salaried employee does any work during a designated workweek, salary basis rules generally require paying them for the entire week.

This creates a planning problem. You might have salaried managers who worked remotely during the disaster and hourly staff who couldn't reach the building. Your payroll obligations differ. Your operational capacity differs. Your recovery timeline depends on knowing who falls into which category and having contingency plans for both. The legal framework also prohibits employees from "volunteering" their services. Any work performed for the employer must be compensated, which complicates informal recovery efforts.

Building a Staffing Continuity Plan

Miami-Dade County assigned more than 6,000 essential workers to manage 80 evacuation shelters during hurricane season. They used HR systems and geographic information systems to make assignments and created an app showing workers located near each shelter along with languages they spoke and other relevant skills. This level of planning treats staff geography as infrastructure, not just an HR detail.

Your plan needs three layers. First, identify essential roles at each location and the minimum headcount required to operate safely. Second, map where those essential employees live and what routes they use. Third, establish backup staffing protocols: who can work remotely, who can be redeployed from unaffected locations, and what cross-training exists to cover gaps. This isn't complicated, but it does require thinking about disasters before they happen.

Communication Is Half the Battle

After a disaster, it's common to lose touch with displaced employees. Mail delivery may not continue. Power outages knock out internet and cell service. Employees may evacuate to areas without reliable connectivity. COBRA regulations still require employers to mail notices to an employee's last known address. The practical solution: send notices to physical addresses, email addresses, and text messages simultaneously. Encourage employees to update contact information even if it's temporary.

Employee check-in systems solve two problems at once. They confirm who is safe and who is available to work. A simple acknowledgment request through a mass notification system tells you within hours which team members can return and which need additional support. This data shapes your staffing plan in real time rather than forcing managers to make phone calls one by one while dealing with everything else a disaster throws at them.

The Waiting Game

When your building is ready but your staff can't reach it, every hour of inaction costs money and erodes customer trust.

The Multi-Location Advantage

Organizations with multiple locations have options that single-site businesses don't. Employees from unaffected branches can temporarily redeploy. Workloads can shift to facilities that are operational. Customer communications can explain service availability by region rather than complete shutdown. But this only works if you've planned for it in advance. Without cross-location staffing protocols, each branch operates as an island during a crisis.

During Hurricane Milton recovery, retail chains that opened quickly did so because they had already identified backup staffing pools and established protocols for redeployment. They knew which locations were likely to flood, which employees lived in higher-ground areas, and how to communicate rapidly across the network. The playbook existed before the storm arrived. Everything else was execution.