Government offices and international businesses were crippled yesterday by the power outage ? but the head of the Bermuda International Business Association believes the ?blip? in the business week will soon be forgotten.

?It is minimal for Bermuda?s reputation and it will be forgotten in the next couple of days as long as we can get up and running quickly and keep business flowing,? Deborah Middleton said, adding that such problems can occur anywhere.

?The new reality is you can have suicide bombers in one jurisdiction, you can have hurricanes in another jurisdiction, you can have tsunamis in other places. It is the nature of the world we live in today and we just have to be prepared for these events and be able to bounce back from these challenges as quickly as we can.?

Early in the day, a number of businesses were quick to announce by radio that they would be closed. Hand-written notices on the doors of various offices, including law firm Conyers, Dill and Pearman, BISYS Hedge Fund and Ernst & Young, bore tell-tale signs of the outage. CD&P advised workers to call in for an update while many other notes stated that they were closed all day. A number of employees could not get into their offices because their swipe key cards did not work. Others went into work and coped as best they could without electricity.

Recent tragedies have, however, made the Island better prepared for such outages. Ms Middleton said September 11 and Hurricane Fabian had caused many Bermuda businesses to equip themselves with disaster recovery plans and generators to ensure seamless operations.

Stephen Davis, vice president of business development and marketing at QuoVadis, a managed security provider which includes disaster recovery and business continuity, and his co-workers were in early in the morning to deal with their customer base. QuoVadis helped companies restore their computing systems yesterday and also set up customers with temporary work spaces at its waterfront premises.

QuoVadis also received a number of calls yesterday from companies, which, in the face of the outage, saw a need to improve their disaster recovery plans in areas such as back-up systems and archiving of data.

?After Hurricane Fabian there was immense interest in Bermuda?s corporate sector in disaster recovery. It begins to slide down on the priority list, but when significant events like this happen it brings it right back up to top of the list. I?m certain that pretty much any organisation in Bermuda is going to be taking look at what to do in the event of hurricane or power outage that can hinder their ability to operate,? Mr. Davidson said.

But he pointed out that an event like this no doubt challenges the community.

?The key thing is how quickly a community recovers from it,? he said, adding that many different groups came together yesterday to ensure his operation was able to provide the support its customers needed.