"A winter storm continues to ravage the Midwest and Northeast, cutting power, phone and Internet connectivity to millions of homes and businesses. Disaster recovery provider Agility Recovery Solutions is currently recovering 21 businesses and government entities in Kentucky, Missouri, Illinois and Florida with electrical and network services. An additional nine organizations have Agility on standby for potential recoveries in the next 24 hours."
http://www.pitchengine.com/agilityrecoverysolutions/disaster-recovery-company-responds-to-21-disastersresulting-from-winter-storm/3776/

Many of us rely upon vendors and third-parties for our disaster recovery efforts. For example, I personally rely upon a refueling company to keep my generator topped off and a maintenance company to keep it running. Other companies rely upon shared data centers, data backup/recovery companies, and DR plannters like Agility Recovery.

A weakness in these plans occurs when a regional disaster impacts multiple companies. In these scenarios, the third-party may lack the capacity to handle all the requests and be overwhelmed. One thing that happened to my data center during the winter storm (which knocked power out for five days) was that the fuel trucks were delayed for 48 hours, and the maintenance crew delayed for 24. The times are well within tolerances, but well beyond normal service levels.