How to Survive Fires, Floods, and Other Disasters Hitting Your Restaurant

By the time Terri Stark’s phone rang late one Sunday night last October, it was already too late. Willi’s Wine Bar, the Healdsburg, Calif., restaurant she’d owned for more than 15 years, was minutes from being consumed by a wildfire that would ravage Sonoma County for nearly a week.

An employee who was nearby raced to the property to turn off the gas line and hose down the building, Stark recalls,...