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Norm Brodsky is a veteran entrepreneur.

The terrorist attacks could claim even more victims unless businesspeople take steps right now to make sure that their companies will be able to weather the crisis

Let me begin by just telling the story.

My business sits on the Brooklyn side of New York City's East River and has a panoramic view of the beautiful Manhattan skyline. Until Tuesday, September 11, that skyline included the enormous twin towers of the World Trade Center. Sometime around 8:55 that morning, my company's president, Louis Weiner, glanced up from his desk and noticed smoke billowing out of one of the towers. When he looked closer, he could see a large, gaping hole in the side of the building.

He called out to some of the other people in the office, who joined him at the window. Outside the building, other employees gathered and stared at the sight. There were two or three dozen of them watching when the second airliner flew into the other tower and exploded.

At moments like those--assuming there's ever been another moment like that one--you want to be with your people, but I was unfortunately several miles away. My wife, Elaine, and I were sitting in an American Airlines jet at JFK International Airport, getting ready to depart for Los Angeles, en route to a business conference in Palm Springs. The plane was still at the gate when the pilot came on the PA system and said that there had been a horrific disaster: two commercial airliners had crashed into the World Trade Center.

Everyone on the plane who had a cell phone immediately pulled it out and started dialing frantically. I called Louis, my company's president, who told me what he'd heard and seen. I then phoned my daughter Beth, who is at school in Washington, D.C. While I was talking with her, my other daughter, Rachel, called and said that, according to early news reports, at least one of the crashed jets was an American flight. I told Elaine, who said, "We're getting off."

We stood up and walked down the aisle. When we got to the front of the plane, the pilot asked us why we were leaving. We'd be airborne in a few minutes, he said, and then we'd be safe. "Do you know who all these people are?" I asked, pointing to my fellow passengers.

"No," he said.

"Well, neither do I," I said and walked off the plane.

Meanwhile, back at the company, Louis was trying to deal with the growing sense of panic among our employees, many of whom had friends working at the World Trade Center. One tower had already collapsed. We talked by phone and decided that he should call everybody together and tell people they could go home immediately if they wanted to. Then, when I got back to the company, we could figure out whether or not to close down for the day.

There was no space inside the building large enough to hold all of the people who work at the warehouse, so Louis had them go out to the street that runs alongside the main building and ends at the East River. He was standing there with his back to Manhattan, addressing the assembled employees, when they suddenly gasped and started to scream and cry. Louis turned around. The second tower was crumbling.

He turned back to the employees. "We're going to close for the day," he said. "You can stay here if you don't have anyplace to go. If you do have somewhere to go, you can put your equipment down and leave whenever you like." People were running down the street when Elaine and I pulled up to the building.

When tragedy strikes, priorities change, as we all discovered on September 11. At my company and at countless others around the country, business issues suddenly took a back seat to other concerns. Waves of emotion swept over all of us as we struggled to grasp what had happened and how our lives had changed.

It will be a long time before we know the full extent of the damage inflicted by the airplane hijackers, but I'm already concerned that the economic toll may be greater than it has to be. Disasters of this magnitude--whether they're natural or man-made--affect companies in ways that aren't always immediately apparent. As a result, some companies could be in trouble right now, and their owners might not realize it.

Consider a guy who owns a $5-million delivery business in New York City and has lost 20% of his sales in the wake of the attacks. Some of his customers aren't around anymore, while others have cut back because they've lost their customers. So the likelihood is that the company's sales for the next year will be down by at least $1 million.

If the company has an average gross margin of 50%, the drop in sales means that the annual contribution to overhead will be $500,000 less than planned. Let's say that the owner had expected to earn $100,000 in pretax profit for the year. Now, just to break even, he would have to reduce overhead by $400,000.

By acting quickly, the owner can minimize the damage. If he has a full year to cut $400,000, he needs to reduce his overhead by $33,333 a month, which may not be easy but sure beats the alternative. The longer he waits, moreover, the more drastic the cuts will have to be. If he waits too long, cuts alone may not be enough to save him. He could suddenly find himself in Chapter 11--or worse.

That's more or less what happened to me in the late 1980s. When the stock market plunged in October 1987, my delivery business lost 50% of its sales overnight. Being an inveterate optimist, I told myself that the market would recover and the sales would return, so I didn't cut back as much as I should have. By the time I realized how dire my situation was, events had overtaken me. I filed for Chapter 11 in September 1988.

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