“Did you feel the earthquake?”

That was the question of the day yesterday here at The Sapling Company. Located in Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania, earthquakes are not a frequent occurrence at our office. Consequently, the slight rumble caught everyone’s attention and caused quite a stir. After quickly taking to the internet and other news media for answers, we discovered that there had been a 5.8-magnitude earthquake in Virginia, causing tremors to be felt as far north as New England. Fortunately, the earthquake was mild enough to cause no real damage to the area. However, it did cause many to wonder about the repercussions of a greater, more severe natural disaster. When it comes to Mother Nature, planning ahead is essential. Here’s just a few ways that Sapling’s Wireless and IP Clock systems can make a difference in your emergency preparedness.

Even in a minor earthquake, objects resting on walls and shelves have the potential to come crashing to the ground. Thin, plastic clock crystals are susceptible to shattering should they fall from their place on the wall, causing a mess of plastic shards and wasted money. In a natural disaster, there are more important things to worry about. All Sapling analog clocks are made of shatter-proof polycarbonate crystal which will not break in the event that a natural disaster or other incident should cause the clock to fall from its resting place, saving both clean-up time and repair costs.

As if damaged property wasn’t enough, many of us have experienced the frustration and inconvenience of losing electricity in a storm or natural disaster. In particularly bad conditions, it can take hours, sometimes days, to restore power. Sapling can help prevent some of the pain associated with power outages thanks to its SMA series master clock, which contains a 10-year memory back-up system. Through this helpful technology, you won’t have to worry about losing the accurate time or configurations of your master clock. That way, should your master clock lose power, all of your settings will still be intact.

Taking back-up features one step further, Sapling has implemented a technology known as server redundancy. Many facilities choose to synchronize their clocks through GPS time input, as it is regarded as one of the most accurate means of time synchronization. However, there is still the remote possibility that the GPS antenna could be knocked over or damaged should the weather turn severe, causing the GPS signal to weaken or be lost entirely. The server redundancy feature allows a master clock to store up to 10 back-up NTP server addresses, so if a natural disaster were to cause the GPS to fail, the master clock will revert to one of the back-up NTP servers, guaranteeing that every clock in the facility will still receive accurate and up-to-the-millisecond time.

Whether you are using a wired, wireless, or IP clock system, Sapling has gone to great lengths to ensure that the clocks in your facility can withstand the test of Mother Nature. With a sturdy and reliable clock system in place, facilities will be able to prepare for natural disasters without worrying about broken, inaccurate, or failed clocks. So, did we feel the earthquake? Yes, we did. But our clocks? They didn’t notice a thing.