The brother-and-sister team of David and Barbara Sumida needed two months to rebuild their watercress farm after Hurricane 'Iwa hit in 1982 — then last year they lost another $66,000 worth of crops during a winter storm.

But they're still not thinking about writing a disaster plan for their Sumida Farms, which would spell out how employees should react if a disaster hits the operation along Kamehameha Highway next to Pearlridge Center.

And the Sumidas aren't in a hurry to prepare a "continuity plan" either, which would outline how they would get their 77-year-old family business up and running after a disaster.

"We don't have a plan," said David Sumida, the farm's operations manager. "We're pretty used to working hard here, so we just replant and clean up all of the rubbish and do our best to recover."

For years, the Sumidas' unofficial disaster plan has involved little more than waking up during a storm and watching the damage unfold.

"We live here, so whenever there's storms or heavy rains we go outside and watch," David Sumida said. "Back in February of 2004, we just watched the water rise, and it kept rising. We have that little grass shack on the property, and when it floods, it looks like an island because it's totally surrounded by water."

The Sumidas are hardly alone in Hawai'i, where a survey by AT&T and the International Association of Emergency Managers last month found that six of 14 Hawai'i companies with annual revenue of $25 million or more did not have a continuity plan in place, and half said they do not consider continuity planning a priority.

But hurricanes Katrina and Rita along the Gulf Coast and the damage caused in Hawai'i from hurricanes 'Iwa and Iniki — along with the perennial risk of tsunamis, landslides and earthquakes — should remind Hawai'i businesses that they need disaster and continuity plans, said Jim Newberry, field services manager for the commercial insurance division of Island Insurance Cos., Hawai'i's largest locally owned and managed property and casualty insurance company.

"The majority of businesses don't really take advance preparations," Newberry said. "It's hard to get organizations motivated to do emergency preparations, much less get them to put a plan in place for sustaining your business after a loss."

Part of the reason has to do with the size of Hawai'i companies — especially small businesses — compared to their counterparts on the Mainland, Newberry said.

Small businesses, in particular, often struggle just to stay open in Hawai'i. "Therefore, their resources are stretched thinner," Newberry said.

State Insurance Commissioner J.P. Schmidt also worries that Hawai'i businesses are not purchasing business interruption insurance, which typically covers things like lost profit from shutting down after a disaster and temporary operating expenses such as rent.

"That's something that is often overlooked by businesses," Schmidt said. "There may be an extensive period in which there needs to be reconstruction and cleanup in which they cannot conduct their business and thus will not have any income from their business. Businesses frequently do carry insurance to protect their property ... but they often don't think of what's going to happen if they're not able to conduct their business and have that revenue coming in. They still may have payments that they need to make on loans and other expenses, and yet the revenue stream that they depend on will be cut off."

The cost of business interruption insurance depends on a wide variety of factors, such as the type of business, location and the cost of each businesses' needs following a disaster, according to officials with Island Insurance Companies and First Insurance Co. of Hawaii Ltd.

David Leong, president and CEO of Dave's Ice Cream, has a policy for business interruption, along with hurricane and fire insurance.

"I'm assuming that if a major disaster happens and we're closed for a month, the insurance should pay us all of our losses for that month," Leong said. "That's what I'm thinking I got when I bought it."

But like other Hawai'i business operators, Leong has yet to write a disaster plan or a continuity plan.

"What are you going to do?" Leong said. "If the power goes off, everything melts and we're really stuck."

Leong considered installing generators to keep his ice cream frozen, but "it would be too expensive for us to have generators just sitting around doing nothing year after year," he said. "You have to maintain those generators, and then you have to have an electrician come hook up those generators when the power's out. In a disaster, how are you going to find an electrician? It would be very cost prohibitive for us."

Part of the Sumidas' reasons for not writing disaster and continuity plans lies in the response they've received so far to floods and hurricanes.

The farm is also the headquarters for the 25-member 'Aiea Boat Club, and the Sumidas have never lacked for friends and family to help clean up after nature wipes out their watercress crops.

"Everybody over here pitches in, including not only the workers but friends and relatives," Sumida said. "And those guys from the boat club are terrific. They're always helping out. So in times of disaster, we can always count on our friends."

Reach Dan Nakaso at dnakaso@honoluluadvertiser.com.