EnviroTek GroupStorm Mode · Hurricane Isaias
We kept running while a Category 3 hurricane approached our US office
When the National Hurricane Center put a hurricane warning on Bay County, Florida, home of our Panama City Beach office, EnviroTek switched to Storm Mode. Our systems run in the cloud, a second team in Kingston covers operations, and we published live evacuation information for the public.
As of NHC Advisory 12, 10:00 AM CDT, Friday October 9, 2026: Isaias had maximum sustained winds near 120 mph. This page will be updated after the storm.
No single place runs EnviroTek
The office in the storm's path can lose power without stopping anything. Our services and records sit with cloud providers, our code is kept in version control and redeploys automatically, and a team in Jamaica can act if Florida goes dark.
Panama City Beach, Florida
US office, inside the hurricane warning area. Day-to-day work continues for as long as there is power.
Cloud services
Our website, storm tracker, WhatsApp assistants, task management and accounts all run in the cloud, with nothing hosted in the office.
Kingston, Jamaica
A second team holds administrator cover and receives every system alert while Florida may be offline.
What Storm Mode means
Storm Mode starts automatically, by polling the National Hurricane Center, when the NHC issues a hurricane or tropical storm watch or warning for one of our offices (Bay County, Florida or Jamaica), and ends when it is lifted.
- Operations continue. Daily work, tracking and reporting carry on; decisions that need the affected team wait until they are back.
- Safety information stays current. Official evacuation orders are updated from county sources as soon as they change.
- Systems are fixed first. If anything breaks, it is repaired and redeployed straight away, and reported afterwards.
- The other office backs up. Storm Mode applies only to the office under the warning; the other office takes over administrator cover and system alerts until it is lifted. It works both ways: Kingston backs up Panama City Beach, and Panama City Beach backs up Kingston.
- Controls stay on. Approvals, audit trails and duplicate-message checks keep working throughout.
Information we published for the public
Storm Tracker
The NHC forecast cone, track and storm surge, a list of the evacuation orders in force, and a map of each Florida county's evacuation zones under order. It refreshes with every NHC advisory.
Atlas on WhatsApp
Our WhatsApp assistant answers storm questions from live NHC data. Share a Florida location and it gives your official evacuation zone (from the Florida Division of Emergency Management) and whether an order covers it.
Both channels repeat official orders only, link to the county, and never tell anyone whether they are safe. Orders were tracked for Bay, Escambia, Okaloosa, Walton, Franklin and Gulf counties.
How we watched the storm and our systems
- Two independent storm watches, one in the cloud and one in the office, check the NHC advisory and county evacuation orders every three hours.
- A system health check every 15 minutes alerts administrators in both countries if a service, message queue or scheduled job fails.
- Safe deploys: a new version only goes live once it passes its tests and health check, and automated deploys sign in with short-lived credentials rather than stored passwords.
What we are improving
Running Storm Mode for real showed us where to strengthen it:
- Giving the cloud storm watch the same official sources and update rights as the office watch, so the office watch becomes a backup only.
- Agreeing a second contact for urgent alerts during a storm.
After the storm
We will add how each service performed through landfall, any interruptions and how long they lasted, and when Storm Mode ended.
Storm data: National Hurricane Center, NOAA. Evacuation zones: Florida Division of Emergency Management, Know Your Zone. Always follow your local emergency management. EnviroTek Group is not affiliated with or endorsed by NOAA, the National Weather Service or FDEM.