# An Earthquake Is Over Quickly. The Downtime Isn’t. An earthquake gives no warning, and restarting servers isn’t recovery. See why network dependencies slow earthquake recovery and how Expedient DRaaS helps. Source: https://expedient.com/knowledgebase/blog/2026-10-08-an-earthquake-is-over-quickly-the-downtime-isnt/ [](#) # An Earthquake Is Over Quickly. The Downtime Isn’t. October 08, 2026 5 min Read ## Key Takeaways - In an earthquake, recovering servers is only part of the challenge. - The true cost of an earthquake includes the business disruption that happens after the initial damage, including lost productivity, delayed projects, and increased support demands. - Expedient Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) helps organizations recover quickly with automation, resilient recovery, and managed services. When an earthquake strikes, virtual servers may come online in a secondary location, but why is the rest of the environment still down? Recovering virtual machines is only part of the process. Every business application depends on the network to connected users, databases, payment systems, cloud services, and third-party applications. Load balancers, VPN tunnels, DNS records, IP addressing, firewall policies, and routing all have to be restored and orchestrated before those connections work again. Meanwhile, the downtime clock keeps ticking. For Global 2000 organizations, downtime averages $15,000 per minute, and 81% of technology leaders report losing customers from downtime events.1 ## Why Earthquake Recovery Takes So Long The more damage there is to the surrounding infrastructure, the longer recovery takes.2 But even when systems are available, getting the business back online is rarely as simple as starting virtual machines. Payment systems depend on firewall rules, while business applications rely on DNS. VPNs, IP addressing, routing, and third-party connections. Those dependencies don’t automatically move with a virtual machine; they have to be orchestrated as part of the recovery process. In an earthquake, that orchestration often has to happen under extreme pressure and in a matter of minutes.3 ## Why Aren’t Organizations Prepared? Recovering infrastructure isn’t enough. Organizations also need to know how they can process real customer transactions after failover. Under normal circumstances, network changes can be handled by the engineer who knows the environment. An earthquake can take that option away. Unlike hurricanes, there’s no opportunity to migrate workloads, relocate personnel, or troubleshoot while production systems are still online. If recovery depends on manual updates or undocumented processes, those dependencies quickly become liabilities when every minute counts. That’s why the most valuable DR test is one that assumes no warning, no on-site staff, and no manual intervention. It should prove the business can continue operating automatically and under real-world conditions. ## How Expedient Can Help For a no-warning event like an earthquake, modern recovery has to start without anyone touching a keyboard. With Expedient Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS), systems are set to act, not react, so you can bounce back from disruption quickly with: **Continuous replication with orchestration** means you can avoid data loss and eliminate the manual failover steps that introduce human error. **Clean failover environment** so if there’s a cyberattack, isolated recovery sandboxes can protect you from reinfection. **24x7x365 U.S.-based support and runbooks** with experienced engineers to guide you step by step in the event of a crisis. **Regular recovery testing** as often as you need because readiness is only as good as your last test. **Deep integration with your solution stack** so recovery is easier to manage and works with your core workloads. ## Your Next Steps Operating in a seismic zone means planning for zero minutes of warning. That distinction can mean the difference between a brief interruption and a prolonged outage that affects customer, revenue, compliance, and regulatory obligations. [Download the Expedient Earthquake DR Preparedness Guide](/lets-talk/) for a practical checklist of common recovery risks and recommendations. Then [schedule a complimentary 30-minute assessment](/lets-talk/) with an Expedient disaster recovery specialist. There’s no obligation, just practical guidance to help you evaluate your current state of readiness and make informed operational decisions before an earthquake strikes. [Calculate the Cost of Downtime](https://expedient.com/knowledgebase/tools-and-calculators/cost-of-downtime-calculator/) ## Frequently Asked Questions #We already test our disaster recovery plan. Isn’t that enough? Not necessarily. Many disaster recovery (DR) tests confirm that servers can start at the recovery site, but they don’t verify that applications can communicate the way they did in production. Firewall rules, DNS records, IP addressing, and other network dependencies are often rebuilt manually after a failover instead of being tested as part of the recovery process. #Does this only matter for organizations near a fault line? No. An earthquake in one region can affect organizations far beyond the epicenter. Employees may need to connect from other locations, workloads can shift to alternate data centers, and disruptions to communications, utilities, or carrier infrastructure can impact operations far outside the affected area. Any organization with facilities, employees, customers, partners, or critical services in an earthquake-prone region has some level exposure. #How is network failover different from standard Disaster Recovery as a Service? Many Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) solutions focus on replicating data and restarting virtual machines. Network failover goes further by orchestrating the firewall, load balancer, VPN, DNS, routing, and security policy changes needed to reconnect applications, users, partner, and third-party services automatically. Without those network services, recovered servers may be running, but the business may still be offline. * * * ## Sources 1. Splunk and Oxford Economics, [The Hidden Costs of Downtime](https://www.splunk.com/en_us/pdfs/gated/ebooks/the-hidden-costs-of-downtime-2026.pdf), May 2026 2. The Great California Shakeout, [California Scenario](https://www.shakeout.org/california/scenario/), accessed August 2026 3. USGS, [Earthquake Hazard Program](https://www.usgs.gov/programs/earthquake-hazards/earthquakes), accessed August 2026 #### #### #### #### [ ![Expedient](https://res.cloudinary.com/dvlpy3tua/image/upload/fl_sanitize/uploads/explogo.png) ExpedientIntelligent Infrastructure Services for Cloud + Data + AI ](/knowledgebase/blog/authors/expedient) [Disaster Recovery](/knowledgebase/blog/tag/disaster%20recovery) ### Related Posts [ #### Three IT Decisions That Are Really One Key Takeaways As enterprise data grows, data gravity ... Learn More ](/knowledgebase/blog/2026-09-08-three-it-decisions-that-are-really-one/)[ #### The Fit Test Behind Better Infrastructure Decis... Key Takeaways Most infrastructure environments weren’... Learn More ](/knowledgebase/blog/2026-08-27-the-fit-test-behind-better-infrastructure-decisions/)[ #### The VMware Wait Tax: Why Every Quarter of Delay... Inaction on a VMware migration is widely treated as a neutral position, a de... 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