MANAGING EMERGENCIES: WHAT TO DO WHEN BASIC OR BIG DISASTERS STRIKE
Sian Brannon and Kimberly Wells
Perhaps you will never need any of the information provided here, but let’s face it—chances are something unexpected is going to happen at your library. Emergencies can be large-scale disasters or they can be quickly developing situations. For all stages of emergencies, there are considerations for your building, including materials and processes that staff should be aware of for smooth handling of these situations. Create these contingency responses now, and hope you never have to use them.
GENERAL EMERGENCY SUPPLIES
An emergency supply tub contains initial supplies to be used during and after an emergency. (These are not the same as disaster-recovery supplies, which include materials to be used in the preservation efforts of damaged materials.) Every location should have at least one supply tub, containing supplies to be used during and after an emergency in their building. All levels of staff should know its location, and its contents should be reviewed periodically. One person needs to be responsible for keeping it stocked and checking expiration dates.
All of the supplies can be purchased at a home improvement store. Remember that, even though we sometimes have advance warning an emergency (freezes, wildfires, etc.), these are the items that will fly off the shelves as your community prepares for the worst. Staff time should not be wasted trying to track these items down, so buy them ahead of time. The purpose of having general emergency supplies on hand is usually for the most basic types of emergencies, such as a leak in the roof, a power outage, first-aid needs, or a small fire. Make sure you have these items in your emergency supply tub:
DISASTER RECOVERY
Sometimes emergencies are much bigger. After a tornado, flood, or car coming through the front door, you have a lot of decisions to make, and when the dust settles you have to know what to do first. Begin by implementing your disaster recovery plan to determine which services to get back up and running. Include input from other departments, such as facilities and technology services, when you create your plan so that you have reasonable expectations and those departments are aware of your intentions after an emergency. Paper copies of these documents should stay in the trunk of your and your staff’s car, because after a large emergency you are unlikely to be able to pull up an electronic copy on a staff computer.
A disaster team should be formed in advance. It should include the director, branch managers, librarians, and representative staff members who have the ability to assess the extent of damage to their collections, assign priorities, and make value judgments about salvaging and discarding. Each member of the team should keep a copy of the disaster plan at home. Responsibilities of the disaster team are as follows:
There are other people to keep in mind when you are dealing with disaster recovery. You may need phone numbers and contacts for cold-storage or freeze-drying businesses, pallet companies, refrigerated trucking, and companies from which to order dehumidifiers, generators, wet-dry vacuums, water pumps, and fans.
A comprehensive disaster recovery plan should include the following:
Check the following on an annual basis:
Make location maps that indicate where all in-house emergency equipment is kept, and post these in each department. Post emergency phone numbers in each department. Make sure that each area has a fire extinguisher as well as a transistor radio and flashlight.
Make sure that computer storage is updated regularly and kept in a safe place.
Have regular fire, tornado, and other disaster drills.
None of these things will have any impact if your staff does not know the locations of your manuals or supply tubs, or if they are not trained to use their contents. The number-one goal during a crisis is keeping your staff and customers safe, and these supplies and manuals will go a long way in helping accomplish that goal.