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CRAINS

During the Summer of 2007, a steam-pipe explosion in midtown Manhattan kept Jeff Isler and his 16 employees out of their Lexington Avenue office for more than a month, costing his family-owned business, InfoGraphics Inc., $250,000 in damages and lost revenue.

Only a handful of firms near the steam-pipe explosion were enrolled in the Corporate Emergency Access System (CEAS), a credentialing service that allows key employees to enter their offices during disasters. The locked-out businesses either didn't know about the program or declined to sign up for it.

Headquartered in Central New York, the Business Network of Emergency Resources, Inc (BNet) is a not-for-profit company dedicated to establishing practical and effective emergency and crisis management solutions through partnerships between the public and private sector. The goal of BNet's not-for-profit charter is to "relieve the government burden" in establishing these partnerships.

Since 1999, BNet has pioneered the way to providing emergency management credentialing solutions for the private sector through their Corporate Emergency Access System (CEAS). CEAS facilitates rapid business recovery and local economic and infrastructure resiliency through a pre-event credentialing program in partnership with local governments. Most large corporations and smaller, proactive businesses have disaster recovery and emergency response plans in place. However, even the most sophisticated corporate planners can do little when public safety officials deny access to worksites. BNET was established to help create the awareness and partnerships necessary to overcome such obstacles and promote the vital link between business continuity and the economic recovery of a region.