Everytime should be configured a or many backup pool with other coin to avoid this situation, e.g. Darkcoin...
I had 3 backup pools in failover, but fail-over didn't trigger because pool 0 was alive, it was just rejecting each and every share from my workers 2, 3 and 4.
Youre right, it's a different story. I haven't any idea to avoid this situation atm.