IF AN EMERGENCY HAPPENED today, what would you do? How would you respond? What would be your first step? What would be your next step? When emergencies happen it instantly triggers many small and many huge questions, and you need to be able to respond to them thoughtfully and effectively.
In an emergency, the safety of visitors and employees takes precedent, but the institution is also responsible for its significant assets—the objects in its care. The safety of the collections depends greatly on the degree to which staff have thought about, researched, planned for, and prepared to respond to a crisis. The impact of an emergency gets progressively worse if the event is not dealt with quickly in a productive manner. The registrar or collections manager will be directly involved with developing readiness plans and responding to the crisis and should be a primary advocate for the collections.
The primary objectives of an emergency planning process are to:
Surprise is often a significant factor during an emergency, and peoples’ emotional reactions to the crisis can impact rational thought processes and responses. A carefully thought-out emergency preparedness plan can be the key to minimizing the impact of a disaster or crisis, with a focus on responsibilities of staff members and procedures to be implemented during and after the event.
The specifics of an emergency plan must be written down and made available in multiple formats, accessible both on site and remotely. The final plan needs to be easy to read, understand, and use. Backup resources are critical, but the initial reaction to a crisis has to be fast and a good plan, with respect to both content and a readable design, makes that feasible.
A readiness plan, or emergency preparedness plan, should contain sections that incorporate the following types of content, customized for the institution:
The mechanics of producing an emergency preparedness plan will vary from institution to institution. The process of developing a plan requires time to assess the specifics of the institution and the collection with respect to the potential risk and time to develop effective responses. Although the process may have a lead staff member, the success of the plan depends on the involvement of key staff throughout an institution during the development of the plan. There is no single one-plan-fits-all-institutions and risks, but there are numerous resources easily available to help.
The first step in creating a plan is research and analysis. Identify potential risks and hazards that are specific to your collections and institution. Use general conservation surveys, collection assessments, and external sources such as the US Geological Survey’s Natural Hazards Gateway1 and the Federal Emergency Management Agency2 (FEMA) to identify these risks. Use worksheets, such as the American Institute of Conservation (AIC) risk evaluation and prioritization worksheet3 to systematically consider the full range of possibilities. Rank risks according to their likelihood and envision the worst-case scenario in each situation. What damage would each disaster cause? If not impacted directly, would your institution be used as a community center, with a potential for collection damages resulting from that use?
Part of the research phase includes locating pertinent resources and suppliers. Resource information includes the obvious (e.g., police, fire, medical response teams) but also the less obvious (e.g., dehumidifiers, oversized fans, or refrigerator semi-trucks). Investigate the appropriate responses and mitigation strategies for the types of materials that exist in the collection because this will determine what supplies you might need after an event. Easy access to critical supplies for immediate, quick response is essential to minimizing potential damage in many emergencies. Some regions host coalitions of cultural institutions that develop caches of supplies for emergency purposes or willing staff to help in a crisis.
Identify priorities for the rescue of collection objects and documents. Although this needs to be completed collection by collection, there should be an institutional priority listing. Time is always an issue in responding to an emergency, so the tough decisions of prioritizing what objects or documents should be rescued first need to be made in advance.
Responsibilities for decision making and implementation of tasks must be clarified in advance (and communicated to the chain of command). Time will be critical; during the emergency event is not the time to try to decide who should do what. Identify which staff members will be needed to respond to a disaster and what their responsibilities and duties will be. Decide who has the right personality and skills to direct response and recovery efforts; this does not have to be, and often should not be, the museum’s director. Assign specific jobs to specific people so that everyone knows exactly what is expected of them, which will help to prevent a chaotic environment as the emergency unfolds. Regardless of the size of the organization, roles that typically need to be assigned include a response leader, liaison to emergency responders, health and safety officer, security and facilities person, administration and financial support, supplies and equipment, communications, assessment, documentation, and salvage. Assigning one coordinator to manage volunteers is the most effective way to use this labor pool. Schedule training sessions to help everyone understand their role—and what they should not try to do.
The format of the final product should be a practical, useful document. A sectioned, three-ring binder allows for easy updating and easy access to content. Copies of the binder should be kept off-site as well as in the museum departments with key responding staff. In addition, there should be a small, shorter, and easy-to-reference response guide for all staff. The staff member who first responds to an emergency situation may not be a trained collections care staff person and, thus, will need to know how to handle decisions relating to the collection. Electronic copies of the plan are essential, but in the case of a power outage, hard copies are critical.
The plan should be reviewed and revised on a regular schedule, at least once each year. At the time of plan revision, the supply kits should be checked and replenished if necessary. Mock emergency drills allow staff to practice for visitor and employee safety as well as how to minimize damage to collections. The written emergency preparedness plan should always be considered a work in progress and should undergo regular evaluation and updating.
The first few hours and days after an emergency are critical to minimize damage and, just as importantly, to prevent additional damage from well-intentioned but incorrect actions. In addition to the immediate response, which might, in fact, take several days, weeks, or even months, there is a recovery phase during which salvage and mitigation activities occur. The recovery phase can take years but is marked by a consistent, controlled process with carefully thought-out actions to mitigate damage from the emergency.
A calm, orderly, and deliberate approach is key to a professional, effective staff response, regardless of the size of the emergency. Safety for staff and visitors is always an overarching concern and should be paramount throughout response and recovery. In the initial response, during evacuation, consciously and sys tematically look for hazards—frayed or loose electrical wires, fallen objects that might trip someone, broken glass, etc. Guide the staff and visitors away from hazards. Staff should not re-enter an emergency area until cleared to do so by professional emergency responders. Although this approach may seem to be common sense, we all know professionals whose first thought of safety will be for the objects and not the people!
Calm and deliberate should be the mantra for staff response. This helps defuse anxiety and deflect frantic, instinctive actions that often result in mis-handling of objects and increased levels of damage. Rely on the chain-of-command structure and the response coordinator to plan and implement appropriate steps. Recognize that in a catastrophic emergency, access to collections may be significantly delayed. In a minor emergency, access should be delayed intentionally—long enough to assess the situation and think ahead to the next steps that are the appropriate and best response for this particular situation.
Steps in response to an emergency include:
The chain of command should clarify which staff position is responsible for each of these steps. Everyone is responsible for regular, effective communication with other team members and for a calm, deliberate demeanor.
Implement the plans to assess and document conditions and damage and to protect at-risk collections with the highest priority. For example, this may involve covering collections to prevent further damage or bringing in specialized services for stabilizing temperature and relative humidity. This is one of several response steps for which advance research and planning will significantly increase the speed and efficiency of the response.
Based on the initial assessment of damage, knowledge of the extent and type of collections affected, and the areas of the institution affected, plan the next steps in the response to determine what resources are needed. The initial response should remove (or protect) as much of the collection as possible from imminent danger, and the recovery and salvage plan should slow or stop damage from the agents of deterioration. There is never one clear path that will solve all the salvage issues, so flexibility along with periodic reassessment is essential. Staff should receive advance training in basic methods for handling and salvaging materials to stabilize the objects, with the expectation that expert knowledge will be necessary at points during the recovery to assess the condition of individual objects and guide methods of mitigation.
Reinforce the need for continuing documentation, communication, and coordination among staff, volunteers, and administration. Salvage and recovery plans require flexibility, informed decision making, and revision as work continues. Recognizing that the recovery phase can extend for months, or even years, clear communication with administrators is critical to manage the recovery and obtain adequate resources for the work. Good photographic documentation can help with fundraising efforts as well as supporting insurance claims.
Print and online references should continue to be updated to provide the most effective information for planning, responding, and recovering from emergencies. Become familiar with resources available through the Heritage Emergency Management Task Force4 (HENTF)—cosponsored by FEMA and the Smithsonian Institution (an original member of the task force)—this is a partnership of forty-two national service organizations and federal agencies. Become familiar with the worksheets, fact sheets, and other resources created by or made available by professional organizations committed to collections conservation, and review updated information annually.
Locate practical tools that might help you develop your own plan and training—the American Alliance of Museum’s Developing a Disaster Preparedness/Emergency Response Plan;5 resources available from American Institute for Conservation,6 including worksheets for risk identification and prioritization; videos for salvage response training; the Field Guide to Emergency Response (2017 update)7 and Emergency Responseand Salvage Wheel;8 and online plans such as dPlan (Northeast Document Conservation Center),9 and ArtsReady (ArtsReady.org).10
The best responses to an emergency are carried out by individuals and organizations that have completed advance research, planning, and repeated training. Resources are available to help, but it is incumbent on the institution to start long before the emergency occurs, and it is the role of the registrar or collections manager to be one of the primary advocates for advance preparations and planning for the safety of the collections. When an emergency occurs, with advance preparations, response team members can implement the plan, confident that they can respond safely and effectively. •
1. Available at: https://www.usgs.gov/mission-areas/natural-hazards.
2. Available at: https://www.fema.gov/.
3. Available at: https://www.culturalheritage.org/docs/default-source/resources/emergency-resources/repp/repp-risk-prioritization-worksheet.pdf.
4. Available at: https://www.fema.gov/media-library/assets/documents/113297.
5. Available at: https://www.aam-us.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Developing-a-Disaster-Plan-2018.pdf.
6. Available at: https://www.culturalheritage.org/.
7. Available at: https://store.culturalheritage.org/site/index.php?app=ecom&ns=prodshow&ref=FAIC-2.
8. Available at: https://store.culturalheritage.org/site/index.php?app=ecom&ns=prodshow&ref=FAIC-1.
9. Available at: https://www.dplan.org/.
10. Available at: https://www.artsready.org/.