On January 6, the city of Richmond, Virginia, went dry—literally. A deep freeze triggered a malfunction and flooding at a major water treatment facility, cutting off water to the entire city and parts of the surrounding counties. No water to drink, cook, or flush. Just silence from the tap. The kind of thing most folks never think about until it’s gone. But for those of us in tech? It’s a loud alarm about fragility—and not just in plumbing.

Here’s the connection: infrastructure, whether water, power, or IT, shares one painful truth—most of it wasn’t built for now, let alone what’s next. In IT circles, we often talk about “technical debt”—the idea that old systems patched with duct tape and hope eventually come due. Cities are facing that same debt with their core services, and when the weather throws a punch, they don’t have the resilience to roll with it. Sound familiar?

For small businesses, especially those relying on physical locations—salons, clinics, restaurants—this kind of outage is devastating. No water? No business. But there’s a deeper layer here for tech professionals. Many of us build solutions assuming the basics: power, water, internet. When one of those vanishes, even the smartest systems go dumb fast. So how do we prepare? By going back to basics—true continuity planning. Think uninterruptible power and manual procedures. Cloud backups and offline access. Hybrid setups that let you pivot when your environment doesn’t cooperate.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep saying it: resilience isn’t sexy. It doesn’t show up in glossy brochures. But it’s what keeps you in business when the lights go out—or in this case, when the faucet runs dry. This isn’t just Richmond’s problem. It’s all of ours. Time to check your systems, double-check your assumptions, and remember that even the best cloud architecture won’t help if your employees can’t wash their hands.