Businesses batten down for Hurricane Earl

As Hurricane Earl works its way up the northeastern coastline, small businesses are scrambling to protect their establishments.

Businesses and local governments from North Carolina to New England are kicking preparations into high gear to get ready for the category 4 storm, Portfolio.com reports. While the brunt of the storm is expected to remain out to sea, some small businesses are already reporting damage.

From the Bogue Banks to Kitty Hawk in North Carolina, tourists have been ordered away during the last week of the lucrative summer vacation season. In Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, boaters are removing their crafts from the water.

Officials are encouraging business owners to take necessary precautions to protect not only their businesses, but their employees and themselves.

“Don’t wait. If weather reports predict a hurricane for your area, proactively move personnel out of harm’s way, shift work processes to alternate locations, and move assets so they are in place in a secondary location,” Bill Hughes, an employee of disaster recovery firm SunGuard Availability Services, told the site.

Disaster preparation is extremely important, as a new Home Depot survey shows. It revealed that of businesses that experience a disaster and do not have an emergency plan in place, 43 percent will never reopen.