I'm a DBA in New Orleans, LA, and I work for the Health Sciences Center. I concur that data is extremely important and guarding it with valid backups is one of the most important duties of a DBA. Our data center was located in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, and we did not have access to it for over a month. We had to setup our infrastructure from scratch. Had we not been prepared with valid backups, hospitals and schools would not have been able to operate correctly and efficiently. We worked day and night to get things up and running, and we were able to successfully do so. Now we have a complete production system offsite, and we are even better prepared, if we ever have another disaster.