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Water "incidents"



One of the things I do is give disaster prevention/response workshops and talks. A number of years ago, I did a workshop in Yuma, way down in the southwest corner of Arizona. We made arrangements with the Fire Department, so we had fire, lots of water and hundreds of "disastered" items at their training facility across the street from the main library. About three weeks later, the city's art center, a converted train depot, went up in flames on Saturday night, the result of an electrical short. For the next five days, I worked with some great volunteers, many of whom had attended the workshop, to salvage and stabilize what had not burned.

A previous message mentioned the potential of water collecting in air ducts. Almost twenty years ago, I was called to salvage about one thousand books at a local university. Something had happened to the HVAC system on top of the five-story building, and books on the third floor were inundated. Again on a Saturday.  

Several things come immediately to mind about disasters:
1. They always (almost anyway) happen on weekends.
2. They seldom happen when or how you might imagine.
3. A salvage operation, no matter how finely tuned, will not go as expected.
4. It is always easier and cheaper to prevent a disaster than to cope with the aftermath.
5. Even if you never use it, a written disaster plan is never a waste of time.

For those who haven't any idea of where to start in creating a disaster plan, you might check my website at http://www.lib.az.us/archives/conservation.htm. I created both generic disaster plans with smaller institutions in mind, but they're a good starting place. I did a teleconference on disaster planning a couple of years ago for the College of DuPage, and the video is available from the American Library Association for $95 (ISBN 0-8389-5769-2). Nope, I receive no royalties. The tape is reviewed in Technicalities, Volume 20 Number 6, November/December 2000.


Michael McColgin
Conservation Officer
Arizona History and Archives Division
mimccol@dlapr.lib.az.us