No one wants to think about the worst that could happen. Preparing for a disaster that might never occur can seem expensive and time consuming, especially with so many more immediate metaphorical fires to put out. But the newspapers are full of just such events—floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, wildfires, not to mention the nuclear catastrophe in Japan—and by the time one appears on your own horizon, it’s too late to start thinking ahead. What you do in the 24 to 48 hours after a disaster occurs can tip the balance between saving a museum collection or losing it completely.
On June 14th Heritage held an Emergency Response and Collections Salvage Workshop with conservator Mary Jo Davis. Funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, this workshop was offered free to staff and volunteers of local cultural institutions and was attended by a score of folks from museums and historical sites in southeastern Massachusetts.
Conservator MJ Davis talks about disaster preparedness.
Mary Jo (MJ) Davis has made a career of preserving the rare, the unique and the irreplaceable. Alongside her conservation business, she has been training museum people to handle emergencies for more than a decade. In 2003, she organized the state-wide Vermont Emergency Response Team for Cultural Institutions.
Prints recovered from the mock disaster.
MJ gave workshop participants plenty of new ways to think about their own disaster prep. How are objects in their museums protected from flooding, earthquakes (which have happened in New England!) or the water, wind and glass of a window broken during a hurricane? Does their museum have a generator or a stash of emergency supplies? Does the museum have a formal Disaster Plan? Have they practiced it? What are the town or city-wide disaster plans? Much of being prepared hinges on people working together, both within an institution and between the instution and the larger community. MJ showed participants why it’s so important to make those connections ahead of time.
In addition to telling workshop participants what to expect after a disaster, MJ had participants try their hands at salvaging a few fake artifacts that were specially “damaged” for the occasion. Water damage to museum collections is among the most common problem after a catastrophic event. Different materials will behave in different ways when they get wet; ceramics and glass are, not surprisingly, fairly resilient, where ivory and leather can be easily ruined. It’s important for the museum staff who might have to salvage collections in an emergency to know how to handle various materials and whom to call for further assistance.
Filling the pools with faux artifacts.
MJ and Heritage collections staff staged four kiddie pools with a variety of “artifacts” collected from yard sales, thrift stores and their own basements. The pools were filled with a couple inches of water and left to soak for several hours. The realism of the manufactured disaster was aided by a light rain that fell on the pools while the objects got damaged.
Mock disaster soup.
Then the real fun began. The first thing to do was get organized, which meant assigning specific tasks to each member of the salvage teams. Once the initial assessment of the overall damage was complete, teams came up with a plan for the salvage operation. As each object came out of the pool, it was recorded on an inventory, carefully transported to the triage area, its condition assessed and a treatment carried out. Most often, these treatments are not the final recovery of the object, but preparation for the limbo stage of freezing. If the damage affected a lot of objects at once, it may not be possible to carefully dry each of them right then, especially if the building where they usually live has flood damage! Groups of wet objects are often frozen in commercial freezer trucks so that later they can be dried a few at a time.
Assessing the situation.
Carefully transporting a damaged artwork.
Treating the objects at the Triage Station.
A series of photographs hung to dry.
As the workshop attendees worked, they discovered that some objects were relatively undamaged and that others couldn’t be saved. They also learned that even with recovery treatment, objects once damaged by water would never be as good as they were before. It is better (and a lot cheaper) to prevent damage from happening in the first place. Having no plan at all is a completely avoidable disaster.
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