 Okay, thank you all so much for joining us for today's webinar. This is the third in your eight-part series to complement in-person training for the Seattle Heritage Response Team. These programs are made possible through the generous grant funding support of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Today we'll be discussing the all-important topic of health and safety after disasters. The first of the three programs in this series have addressed more general topics relevant to all responses. Starting on August 22nd, we'll move into programs that address material-specific salvage considerations. So looking at paintings, textiles, photos on electronic media, look at paper objects, and wooden and upholstered furniture. We'll wrap the final program on October 10th, which will be about three weeks before our final in-person meeting and disaster scenario. If you miss any of these webinar sessions, I'll email you with a recording of the program. You can write to me when you've finished with the recording, and I'll note your attendance. You'll be expected to complete all webinars before we meet again on November 1st. Before we begin today's presentation, I wanted to share some brief technical notes. On your screen you'll see several boxes, including one labeled chat on the left-hand side. You can of course use that to say hello and ask questions and share any information that you'd like. If you post a question there in the chat box, you'll receive a response from me. Any questions will be noted, collected, and then I will verbally ask some of our presenters when they both complete their remarks. You'll also see a box at the bottom of the screen titled Web Links. Simply click on one of these links to highlight it in blue, and then click the Browse To button at the bottom of the window in order to open that page. And with that, I'm very pleased to introduce you to both of our presenters, Tara Kennedy and Al Barna. Tara Kennedy is the Preservation Services Librarian at Yale University Library. She holds an MLIS and a Certificate of Advanced Studies in Library and Archives Conservation from the University of Texas at Austin. An MS in Forensic Science from the University of New Haven, and a Bachelor's Degree in Art History from Northwestern University. Before Yale, she worked at the National Archives, the Smithsonian, and the Gerald Ford Conservation Center. Tara is currently serving as the co-chair of the AIC Health and Safety Committee. Outside of work, she is a theater critic for onstage blog and a volunteer for the Dove Network, an online international center for unidentified and missing persons. Al Barna is the Occupational Health and Safety Officer at the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, the young and the Legion of Honor. His 20-plus years of experience at the Fine Arts Museums has enabled him to develop an award-winning museum safety program, recognized by a State of California Division of Occupational Safety and Health, or Cal OSHA, Golden Gate Award. Al is most proud of growing the safety and emergency response program for both museums under the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco umbrella, as staff and footprint have doubled in size. Al also serves as the museum's climate liaison for the city and county of San Francisco's Departmental Climate Action Plan. Tara and Al are both members of the National Heritage Responders. Tara serves in the NHR Working Group, which helps to direct team activities and develop resources. And Al was deployed to New York City and served as the weekly team leader at the FAIC Cultural Recovery Center in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy in 2012. And with that, I'm pleased to turn things over to Tara to start off today's presentation on health and safety after a disaster. Thanks, Jess. All right, let's get started. So why are we talking about health and safety? Why is it so important? Well, first of all, protecting people is paramount. Human life comes before collections. Sometimes we kind of forget that. But do remember, we can't save collections if we're not feeling well or up to it. And if you just take five minutes to put on the proper personal protective equipment, you could save yourself a lifetime in potential chronic illness. So think of it that way. Also, it's required in most cases. OSHA requirements exist for personal protective equipment and are in the codes of many different federal regulations dictating health and safety when working or with or around hazardous materials like you'll find in a disaster site. And lastly, because health and safety, often in emergency situations, is the last thing on everyone's mind. People are so concerned about saving the collection, saving the building, that sort of thing. So they don't think about their own personal safety. So it's really important for people to stop and think about that before they go in and start doing any salvage work. A picture is worth 1,000 words. I have actually two examples of this. So I saw this image in the American Library Association magazine showing Reforma President Tess Tobin on the left and ALA President Loida Garcia Fibo during a hurricane damaged library at the University of Puerto Rico. And I kind of freaked. If this was used as a publicity shot in a magazine, it clearly demonstrates that people don't understand how to protect themselves properly with PPE or masks. You can see the woman on the left is sort of holding the mask up with her hand and has one strap on and not the other strap. And the woman on your right, the strap should be higher on her head. I think the mask is quite large and probably doesn't have a tight seal around her face. So I was kind of alarmed when I saw that picture. And then I recently saw this next slide. It was at a presentation, I guess, for a particular institution. And in this instance, we have the person wearing the respirator correctly. It's great that this individual was thinking about protecting his respiratory system. But he's using a respirator that only will protect him from particulates like dust and mold. It's not going to do anything to protect him from fumes that are being generated by heating up that shrink wrap, which is what I suppose is why he has that on. So the lesson here is it's imperative that one understands which type of personal protective equipment to use and how to wear that personal protective equipment properly so that it protects the individual from the hazard at hand. So when we're talking about the region you all are in, the Seattle Northwest region, Seattle is susceptible mostly to flooding. And usually it's three types of flooding hazards that they're most concerned about. Bodies of water like rivers and streams and creeks, coastline flooding, and also urban flooding. Rivers and similar bodies tend to flood during heavy precipitation, such as the image that you're looking at here shows in the town of Aurelia, I believe is how it's pronounced. Coastal flooding is often associated with storms. High tides and high winds can push water into coastal areas causing storm surges. And urban flooding can happen also when there's heavy sudden precipitation and rains can overwhelm drainage systems. That happens here a lot at Yale because New Haven is close to sea level. And often if it's raining and it happens to be high tide at the same time, we've had our drainage systems become overwhelmed and flooding happen in multiple areas. And as the emergency response, a person responsible for emergency response, it's quite overwhelming when many libraries are flooding at once and there's only one of you. So yeah, so it's good to be prepared. So flooding due to heavy precipitation and storms will continue to probably be the largest threat to Washington state and much of the coastal Northwest. So for example, the image that you see here on your screen is a highlight from the Third National Climate Assessment Report. And it projects areas of Seattle to be below sea level during high tide and therefore at risk of flooding or inundation. Those areas are shaded in blue. And they are under, OK, I'm reading this. Totally wrong. I'm so sorry. So what you're seeing is estimates of areas in Seattle as to where the sea level rise estimates will be around the year 2100. Oh, hi, and my slide went for some reason. That's what they're predicting the sea levels to rise to if there's going to be flooding or inundation of water in those areas. If nothing is done to protect the environment or do anything to prevent those kinds of areas from being flooded. So unconnected inland areas that are shown in this map may not be inundated, but they could experience problems due to areas of standing water caused by a rise in the water table and drainage pipes being backed up with seawater. And if you want to see more of these kinds of maps and what the future might hold on the link, one of the links in your EM web links section in the bottom that says sea level rise analysis, you can actually go and there's an interactive map where you can see what areas of what the areas of Seattle and parts of the Northwest might look like if the sea level were to rise. It's kind of a neat and scary tool at the same time. So I encourage you to go and check it out. If there's actual, it shows differences if there's action taken to do things like reduce pollution and other things that might affect climate change, if you actually took action against causing any start over. If we actually did anything to prevent there being problems with the climate, doing reducing pollution and that sort of thing, it will show that the sea level would be less likely to rise as high than if we did absolutely nothing and let everything kind of continue as it is now. Though I'm pretty, from what I've read, Seattle and the Pacific Northwest is pretty aware of climate change and pollution problems. So they actually are more responsible than probably other areas of the United States. But it's still an interesting tool to examine. And one thing to remember in an emergency is to enact your emergency plan. And if you don't have one, you need one. So what makes up a good response plan? Emergency response plans are considered an ever-changing, ever-improving document. So you always need to be updating it and keeping staff trained in critical functions in case of an emergency. So it's not a static document. There's always room for improvement. And that's why you consider it a living document rather than a static one. So what are the elements of a good emergency response plan? There should be a means of reporting emergencies, evacuation procedures and emergency escape route assignments, critical operation procedures prior to evacuation, accountability, who is responsible for what that is really important, rescue and medical duties, and lists of emergency contacts. And this is at a bare minimum that the elements listed in this slide should be included in your emergency response plan. And this is based off of federal and OSHA requirements. And the institution that you work for may have already incorporated these into their emergency operations plan. So if that is the case, you as collections custodian should focus on the collection recovery part of your plans, but also make note of these critical elements. And Tara, do we want to go ahead and ask the poll question here? Let's do it. Great. So if you take a moment to respond to this poll, does your institution have an emergency plan that is ready for action? Y'all are quiet over there. I know I was a, there we go. So we have a fully developed, we have an, I don't know, the opportunity to train with it. So it looks like people do have plans or at least are working on them, which is great. Keep on working on them, because they are good things to be, to have at the ready. Thanks, Jess. So to give you an example of what we have here at Yale, which is a pretty large institution for our libraries, is these are the five sections we have in our emergency response plan. We have emergency communications, and that describes the institutional level communications. So if you're a large institution like Yale, they'll often have an emergency management department that can enact a university-wide alert. So you can mention those kinds of communications, as well as more localized communications. And it also, if you're a small institution, emergency communications can be as simple as a small phone tray. Who calls first, and then who do they call next, that sort of thing. Prevention and risk assessment. So it's sort of a checklist to list for places to look at to prevent emergencies from happening, such as temperature and relative humidity set points for collection spaces, integrated pest management programs, essentially the steps of a preventative conservation program. Emergency preparation. So what that would be would be training and education for staff who respond to emergencies, creating collection priority lists and maps, so you know which collections you need to respond to first in an emergency. And I mentioned accountability, so overview of areas of responsibility, who the teams are, what their roles are, and what their responsibilities are. For example, we have a facilities duty officer, which is usually the director of facilities or security, and the preservation duty officer. Here in the library, we have an emergency phone number that I carry all of the time. So if someone calls that phone and there's a collections related emergency, I would be responsible as the preservation duty officer to sort of dictate how collections, recovery, response and recovery should go. And if in my absence I can't go, whoever I designate as one of the other preservation managers would take that place. So there's a clear line and a clear chain of command is who's responsible for what. Emergency recovery. So we have lists of emergency supplies that are available. And I also have a chart to kind of let people know or to get a sense of how bad the emergency is. And I'll be showing that in the next slide. And then emergency response. So this slide was taken from this image, was taken from Stanford University Libraries collections emergency response manual. I thought it was a nice example of kind of giving you a gauge as to how severe an emergency is and would then give you the opportunity to figure out how you should respond. Whether it's something where you're going to have to call in an outside vendor because the collections response, there's so many collections that have been affected so that you would have to essentially call in for outside help. When I had that flood surge when it was multiple libraries, I definitely called in an outside vendor to help with cleanup and recovery because it was more than we could handle. The other thing I recommend is Betty Walsh's excellent salvage at a glance. And in your web links box down there, that there's a link to that excellent guide, which talks about different ways of how to recover collections. And I know you'll be talking about that in subsequent webinars. But it's still good information to review and to have at the ready. There are plenty of emergency response and salvage tools. On your left is a screenshot of their emergency response and salvage app, which is available for the iPhone and Android. And on the right is the analog emergency response and salvage wheel and the field guide to emergency response, which are both available through AIC. And these are all good tools to have also about to know how to recover particular collections and what to do in an emergency. Oh, the app's getting updated. Yay. And what I'm showing here in this image is a snapshot of one of our priority maps for one part of our library. And I've created a tool that kind of helps you to prioritize collections a little more easily. What you do is you ask your collections manager or your curators or librarians or selectors a series of yes or no questions. And you create a score. And those numeric scores are then put in priority order. And then you can kind of instantly, magically, prioritize your collections to high, medium, and low, which is what I've done here. And the link is in the slide and also in the web links box as part of the presentation. I encourage you all to go try it out and use it. And I would love feedback, because I'm always interested in trying to improve that tool, since I've only used it here at Yale. In First Responders, it's really good to get to know your local firefighters in First Responders. Hosting an informational social event where they can learn about your collections and their value to the community is helpful. And also having them come and be familiar with your building and its contents is also a really good thing to do. Because the more familiar they are with your buildings and collections, the more efficient their response will be. They'll also understand that they don't need to come in and chop everything down with an ax. They'll sort of understand that this is cultural property and that they need to take care when they come in. And make sure you have off-site resources. And this is also part of emergency preparations. You want to create a list of off-site resources, including regular vendors that you use and service providers, as well as emergency agencies on the federal, state, and city level, depending on where you live. Exclusive service or priority service contract agreements are highly recommended. We do have one for Yale for emergency recovery for the library system. And then I will tell you it has been incredibly helpful for really real emergency situations that can be overwhelming. It's super helpful. And in some cases, you don't even necessarily need to pay any money to do that. But it just depends on the vendor. So I recommend talking to vendors and seeing if you can get a priority service, deal with them even for low costs. I do know that some places have that available. Other things that you might want to have is off-site resources, building architects, besides the ones listed here on the slide, building architects, IT services, environmental services for health and safety concerns, heavy equipment operators, et cetera. So I'm going to talk a little bit about risk and exposure. So as I talked about flooding and water damage being something that would be probably the greatest concern for folks in the Seattle area. And flooding can be the result of all sorts of different types of weather events, hurricanes, tropical storms, just excessive rain, and even earthquakes. Water damage can create hazardous electrical conditions, silt deposits, mud and debris, and a really horrible toxic stew of raw sewage, fuels, and chemicals. And as mentioned, flooding and water damage can also contribute to hazardous electrical conditions. Hurricane Harvey that happened in Houston, there was a lot of press associated with contaminated floodwaters. And then the next slide is an image from Hurricane Harvey in Houston. Because of the number of petrochemical plants and refineries in the Houston area, benzene was a common contaminant found in floodwaters. And pesticides were another contaminant that can be found in floodwaters due to exposure from the water with fields that use pesticides. Bacterias such as E. coli from sewage contamination can be there, as well as heavy metals like lead and arsenic. They were found in standing water in one family's living room where they did testing. And this was in an article in the New York Times. And it was due to the fact that 40 of 1,219 area wastewater treatment plants were not in operation after the hurricane. So bacteria count was extremely high in that case. And unlike the woman in this picture, you should not have any bare skin exposed. And in her case, it's her forearms. And all open sores and wounds should be covered. All vaccinations should be up to date, and you need to wash your hands frequently, because you never know what's going to be in the floodwaters. Mold is of particular concern, because the risk is high in these environments because of high humidity, high temperature, and darkness in some cases if the power has gone out, though mold can still grow in lighted areas as well. And there'll be plenty of organic material for the mold to thrive on, paper, drywall, carpets, and even non-organic surfaces that happen to be dusty. So all molds pose a health risk, and some people are more at risk than others. For some people, mold can be just a sensitizer. Some can be an allergen. And for some, it can be toxic, depending on people's respiratory health. And some molds are toxic to begin with, but only testing will tell you if it actually is a toxic mold. Everyone talks about toxic black mold, quote unquote, which is stachybotrys. It's one of the toxic variants that usually gets a lot of press. It's usually found on construction material, like drywall. So if you see mold on books, it's most likely not stachybotrys, even if it is black, because mold comes in all sorts of colors. So fire is a hazard, obviously, and not just the fire itself. Fire produces smoke, and smoke produces soot. And smoke contains things like carbon monoxide, methane, volatile organic compounds, formaldehyde, benzene, acetic acid, formic acid, toluene, organic carbon, et cetera, so lots of chemicals. And smoke is actually the result of incomplete combustion. So smoke releases carbon particulates into the air, and those particulates are soot. And so this is a lovely picture. So in the aftermath of a fire, soot is going to be deposited on surfaces within a fire damage structure, and is going to contain a lot of those contaminants that I listed. So some of the hazards associated with soot, they are respiratory and dermal. So soot is an irritant to lung tissue and skin, so you want to make sure that you protect your skin as well as your lungs with respirators. There can often be chemical release spills and releases, as I mentioned, about the floodwaters, especially chemicals from plants, pesticides from farms, and even chemicals from facilities closets, these can all cause problems. So an environmental health and safety consultant should be brought in if there's suspicion of chemicals and floodwaters or anywhere in the disaster area. And these days, container labeling is also super important, especially if you have conservation laboratories or even if you just have wood shops, those sorts of things if you're building exhibits and exhibits furniture. So hazard material identification guide or system labels provide proper identification of a chemical in a particular container. And that's supposed to help to eliminate chemical accidents and also expedites emergency medical treatment. And this slide shows you the basic parts of a global harmonization standard or GHS-compliant label. And these have been recently updated, so they now have universal symbols like the ones that you see here. So this refers to corrosive, and that's flammable, and that means irritant. And look, here's the whole list. So from 1 to 9, you have explosive, flammable, that's the O that looks like the heat miser. 4 is gases under pressure. 5 is corrosive. 6 is acute at toxicity. 7 is irritant. 8 is health hazard. And 9 is environmental hazard. All right, so now I will turn the rest of the presentation over to my colleague, Al. OK, thank you, Tara. That was great to absorb all of that information. And I will be following up on some of the things that you touched on in your portion of the presentation. And we'll start with getting into a little more detail about personal protective equipment. Personal protective equipment is actually a concept that's been around for a long time. These are Depression-era posters that were made by the Works Progress Administration. And you can even go back to Nights in Shining Armor for early concepts of personal protective equipment. Now, before you decide on what type of personal protective equipment you need, the best route is to perform a hazard assessment of the determined severity of the situation and what type of hazards might be introduced when you're selecting what kind of PPE or personal protective equipment you're going to use. And something to remember about most types of personal protective equipment is that OSHA, and here in California, CalOSHA, requires a written safety program in order to comply with the standards that govern personal protective equipment. So if you're issuing personal protective equipment to your staff, it's important that you have a written program that will complement the actual distribution of your personal protective equipment. There are certain categories of PPE that will always be required in a cultural response recovery situation. There are basically five categories that we'll talk about. You have head protection, eye protection, hand protection, foot protection, and respiratory protection. Respiratory protection is the most complicated. That's where you're going to have to make more decisions and follow more guidelines than for any other type of PPE that you'll use. Your respiratory protection should start with medical clearance for all of your participants in the program. Of course, you need to have annual fit testing done. You need to maintain medical records. There are eight or nine different components, but as you can see, it is complicated. And again, you have to have a fairly detailed written program as well. For the respiratory protection program that we use at our museums, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, we basically have the written protection program with medical clearance, training, fit testing, and record keeping. Before you get to a point where you realize through your hazard assessment that you need to use respirators, look at options that you may have, mechanical ventilation where you can vent the building through your HVAC system. If you have an HVAC system, if you can provide 100% fresh air intake and 100% stale air outtake, that might be an option that would preclude you from having to use a respirator. All right, now we'll get into hand. I'm done with the. Sorry, before we move to hand protection, do we want to just ask the quick respirator questions? Oh, yes. Have you been properly fitted and fit tested to wear a respirator? And there's a second part to that question. Have you ever worn a respirator when responding to emergency events? It looks like only about a third of the participants have been fit tested. And then about a quarter of them have worn a little bit of responding to emergency events. Thank you, we're going to close this. OK, we'll move on to hand protection. Hand protection is governed by a standard called the ANSI-ISEA 105-2016 Hand Protection classification. Again, it can get kind of complicated because gloves are designed for different purposes. So again, through your assessment, you need to know exactly what type of glove you're going to wear. Gloves are classified to a performance level ranging from 0 to 6, and that's based on their performance when evaluated against defined industry test methods. And those ratings can assist users to select appropriate hand protection for known protection hazards in the workplace. So these bullet points illustrate what different types of gloves are designed to do. And of course, certain gloves will provide protection for a combination of these different bullet points that you see. You have head protection as well. Here you see our staff installing a sculpture in front of the MHD Young Memorial Museum in Golden Gate Park. I like to use this slide because it's our staff behaving properly. Everybody's got on head protection. There is hand protection for people who need it. And you'll also notice everybody's wearing appropriate foot protection as well. Head protection, again, there are a number of different types of hard hats or helmets out there that you can use. One of the mistakes I see a lot is people using what are known as bump caps in lieu of actual real head protection. Bump caps are designed for touring groups who are looking at a construction project or maybe VIP tours of a construction project under in progress. But they don't provide any serious protection for you other than maybe the casual bump on the head from something overhead. So with the head protection standards, you have certain requirements for general industry and also there are head protection requirements for construction, demolition, and renovation workers. Both standards require workers to wear hard hats when there's potential for head injury from impacts, falling or flying objects, or electrical shock. So that pretty much covers the three areas that are researched and tested for the type of head protection you're going to wear. So once again, it gets back to your assessment, your hazard assessment, to determine what type of head protection you will need. And in most emergency situations, after most disasters, whether it's flooding, fire, earthquake, tornadoes, hurricanes, things have been moved, things have been dislodged, there can be structural damage. So things falling on your head, aerial projectiles are very common. So it's a good idea to have a stock of hard hats in your workplace so that you have the proper equipment to respond when you need to. And when you look at a hard hat, the information you're looking for will usually be found on an imprint underneath the bill of the cap or it can also be a decal or a sticker. And that will basically tell you what you need to look for on the hat. It'll tell you what it's rated for in terms of impact, also if it's rated for electrical shock or not. So again, depending on the situation you're working in, you want to make sure you have the appropriate helmet. This is a helmet provided by the AIC for the National Heritage Responders Group. That's what we wear when we go out to a catastrophic situation in the field. Then another really important aspect of PPE is your foot protection. People are always eager and ready to go into a disaster scene in the aftermath of the disaster once, of course, once you're allowed into the building. But I always ask people, do you actually have a pair of steel-toed boots? Because if you don't, you might not be allowed into the building by your emergency responders who are in charge of the situation. So again, you want to look for an appropriate work boot to wear. Steel-toed boots are recommended under most circumstances unless you're working with extremely, extremely heavy objects where the steel-toe can actually work as a lack of a better choice as a kid. So that's a rare situation. I don't think any of us would find ourselves in that situation very often. But you do need to have appropriate footwear. The way you can tell if the boot you're looking at meets the ANSI or the ASTM standard, it'll tell you on the tongue of the shoe or on the collar of the shoe, it's usually sewn into or silk screened onto the shoe itself. And it'll tell you exactly what that shoe is rated for and if it's the appropriate shoe for you to wear. It'll tell you if the shoe is designed for a male or a female, what the concussive force that it can withstand is, and also what the impact force it can withstand is. So you see in the box in that label, you see the ASTM standard, which applies to that shoe. If it doesn't have that standard in the shoe, you shouldn't buy it. It tells you if it's a male or female shoe and what the impact rating is and what the compressive or concussion rating is as well. Again, that's information is on the label, which I circled in case you could pick it up in the previous slide. And then hearing protection. Again, hearing protection is governed by a pretty complex written program as well. You need to have a baseline recording done to establish what your baselines are. We do this for our building engineers there in the mechanical rooms all the time. It's not something you might have to deal with very often. In emergency situations, unless there's construction or repair work going on while you're doing your salvage and recovery operation as registrars and conservators and museum employees. So there are different types of hearing protection and what they are designed to do is to withstand the effects of continuous intermittent or impulse noise. It's based on what's known as a PEL, which is known as permissible exposure level. That's based on a time-weighted average, which tells you how much noise you're hearing, you're experiencing over a certain period of time. Those are things that if you can't figure that out for yourself, which I don't think too many people can, you can always consult with a technician or an industrial hygienist who should have all of that information at the ready. And then I think what's important for a lot of museum workers and cultural workers is eye protection. You want to make sure you're wearing the appropriate eye protection at all times. There are different considerations to consider here as well. For instance, do you need eye protection that has chemical resistance? If you're working around chemicals, that's something to consider. Do you have vented shields on the side of the glasses to protect you from splashes, from an indirect splash as well as a full frontal face splash? So that's something you need to determine. Will you be in an environment where you have to be concerned with impact if the glasses are struck by equipment, tools, materials, lumber, or anything where that can actually strike the flying objects? If it's going to strike the glass, will it be impact resistant? And another thing to consider is optical radiation protection. If you're welding or you're around welding operations, you may consider optical radiation protection. So at this point, I wanted to go back to this slide, and I'm wondering if anybody sees anything wrong with this photograph, with this picture. I won't wait too long. The answer is no. This gentleman is doing everything to protect himself that you could ask an employee to do. He's got head protection. He has eye protection, respiratory protection. He does have gloves. Unfortunately, this photograph doesn't show it. And he's also got fog protection, because he's actually standing on a demolition site where they're knocking down a building here in San Francisco. And I happen to be walking by, and it's a perfect photo op here. Now let's talk about immediate hazards that you may experience in an emergency situation. Glass, for one thing. If you've got a lot of glass in your facilities, you want to be aware of where it's located. If you're in earthquake country, which we certainly are here in the Bay Area in California, but I know that extends to the Pacific Northwest as well, you don't want to find yourself under glass if at all possible once the shaking starts. Because broken glass creates its own set of problems. You have to deal with lacerations, cuts. So again, there's a situation where you're going to need appropriate work boots and the proper gloves to clean up a situation like that. You need to be aware of falling objects. Again, this is not necessarily limited to seismic activity, but all of your objects that have potential for falling over and if they carry any weight to create damage, either damage the collections themselves or damage individuals who are struck by these falling objects, you want to make sure that everything is secured and mounted and padded properly. Your smaller objects can be containerized in plastic bins or paper bins, if the case be plastics better, because it's not as much of a fuel source for immediate fires. Nothing plastic is more of a concern for firemen than burning cardboard. You need to have your shelves secured, bolted into the wall or the floor, and develop a strapping system to keep your container from falling off shelves. One idea about strapping is it might not be a good idea to use bungee cords. Bungee cords create an eye hazard in and of themselves. So a webbing and a buckle system is an adjustable buckle system. It's maybe a more appropriate choice as opposed to using bungee cords. And when it comes to your utility shutoffs, you want to make sure that you're familiar with where those shutoffs are located. Depending on the size of your organization, you may have building engineers who are responsible for this activity or this procedure. But if not, it's good to know where your utility locations are. And it's also good to learn how to shut them off in case that responsibility should fall to you. You should have an exterior site. Sorry to jump in again. Sorry, we had this last poll question. OK, do you know where the hot or main shutoff is in the building that you primarily work in? OK, well, by the results it looks to me like maybe a few people who can get their blindfolded should take the 60% who have no clue and help them find their water shutoffs. But again, this kind of illustrates that it's a good thing to know. Again, this responsibility might not fall to you directly. But in an emergency situation, there's random possibilities. So the more you know, the more you can do in terms of protecting your collections. Your utility should be inspected on a regular basis. And that's really important. You want to make sure that, and particularly after a disaster, you want to check for gas leaks. You want to look for electrical system damage. And also check your sewer and waterline for damage and backup, because that can create flooding. And again, as Tara said, a whole toxic stew of materials that you don't really want to get involved with if you don't have to. So you make sure that all of your drains are clear and the operable, and that can help eliminate that problem as well, as well as annual backflow checks, which is code in most municipalities that you do backflow checks. So again, that's not something that maybe falls in your purview, but it is good to know that those things are important. And to get back to gas leaks, it's important to know that after a disaster, and particularly an earthquake, if pipes have been disturbed, you may have a gas leak. And you can smell natural gas. It has an additive that smells like rotten eggs. That helps you determine that you have a gas leak. You can also hear it sometimes, because the gas line is under pressure. So if you hear a loud hissing or a whistling sound, that also can indicate that you've got a gas leak in your system somewhere. So if you have a gas leak, you want to immediately vacate your building. And while you're doing that, do not create any kind of flame or open spark, because that can ignite the gas. And you've got an explosion on your hands. So once you have evacuated the building and get yourself far enough away from the building so that if there is an explosion and there's flying debris, building materials, you're not going to be struck by those, then you need to call your utility provider as soon as possible and report that you've got a leak. And as far as turning your gas valve off, it's really, once you know where it's located, it's pretty simple to do. When the valve is on, it runs parallel with the pipe. And if you turn it off, you just put it on a diagonal across the pipe. So it's a pretty simple process. It's a matter of locating your gas shutoff and following through on this. It's also a good idea to have all of your water lines labeled so that in an emergency situation, people know if they're dealing with fresh clean water or if you've got a sewer line running through a particular area. And of course, I know you all know that as far as storing your collections, you want to make sure you can put them as far away from pipes and water lines as possible. In that case, you don't want to invite any additional flooding or leaks that will damage your collections. Another immediate after-effect of disaster is electrical hazards. And this combines with water damage and flooding. Or you have shorts if electrical lines have been severed. If you have freight pipes, if you've had a short, you're looking for sparks. You're looking for the smell of burning electrical equipment. Those are things you want to make sure you stay away from. You don't want to go into a situation like that and start grabbing things and trying to solve the situation. Again, you notify your engineers or your authorities, first responders, and let them know that you've got an emergency electrical situation. And if you also have flooding combined with this, you have to be extremely careful because water will carry on electrical current. You can step into a room, step into an inch of water, and electrically yourself. If there's an electrical current running through that water. So you want to be very aware of that at all times. Because, again, not all electrical hazards are as apparent as this one. Here you have a junction box with a light switch and socket plugs that are actually live in this situation, but they were not contained appropriately. So again, this is an obvious electrical situation. Other situations aren't always that obvious. And then the last thing I want to touch on is heat illness prevention. And this came up watching damage from the storms in Florida and Houston in last year. I mean, we realized that a lot of the time, the salvage and recovery work that we'll be doing will be done outside because you don't want to be in a damaged building if you've got water damaged in mold, if you've got structural problems. If your safety systems are down, your fire alarm system or your electrical is down, you're going to be working outside. And in those two areas in Houston in Miami, the weather was still really hot. So it made me think about something that is actually a requirement here in California through the Cal Ocean, is that you have to have a heat illness prevention program. So we'll talk a little bit about the disorders that are related to heat illness. Starting with the most minor of the heat illnesses is heat cramps. They're painful muscle spasms that usually occur in your legs and abdomen. And again, they're least severe if the heat-related emergencies. What I have here are the bullet list of the symptoms and a bullet list of the first aid that you would provide to a coworker or even to yourself if you can in a situation like this. We won't enumerate those. I think you can see those for yourself. The next stage of heat illness is heat exhaustion. That's an early stage situation. And it's an early indicator that your body's cooling system is becoming overwhelmed. Again, the symptoms of that and the first aid that you can provide to combat that situation. And then, again, a little more serious with a late-stage heat stroke. This occurs when your body's systems are overwhelmed by heat and stop functioning. Heat stroke's a life-threatening condition. So again, a situation like this is life-threatening. It can develop really rapidly as your organs shut down. Your body's in big trouble. So you never want to get to this stage. So again, if you can prevent all of these by providing these following four bullets. If you provide hydration, water, fluids, it should never be alcohol or caffeine. That's only going to exacerbate the situation. But water and staying hydrated is crucial. You need to provide access to shade. If you don't have natural shade from a tree or the side of a building, you may have to erect a shade tent or some kind of a structure to keep your staff in the shade. And acclimatization is a very practical concept, but not necessarily practical in an emergency salvage and recovery situation. Acclimatization is when you are able to let your employees gradually get used to the high-heat conditions. It usually takes a period of two weeks where you might start by working one hour a day like hot sun or two hours a day. So you can see with an emergency response situation, that's not always an option. And you can also provide a heat illness prevention training for your employees. Again, here in California, it's law. We have to provide that training to any of our employees who are working outside and are exposed to the elements, particularly to heat. So that concludes what I had to offer today. So I'd like to thank you for your time and attention. And thank you very much. That's the end of the presentation. Great. Well, thank you so much, Al, and thank you, Tara, as well. It's so wonderful that you both have very generously offered your contact information, too. So if anyone has a question that you think of after the fact, you can contact Al and or Tara to check in, too. So if anyone does have any questions, I would encourage you to go ahead and drop those in the chat window on the left-hand side. And while people are typing, I'm going to go ahead and drop in a link in that chat window to a resource that AIC's Health and Safety Committee has put together to help with figuring out which glove would be appropriate for different kinds of situations. So it's essentially a chart to help navigate your hand protection questions. So thank you to Tara for pointing out this resource. OK, so yeah, Megan's commenting that it's time to go get a blindfold and practice, checking where your water main shut off is in your building. Yeah, I think that's a great point that Al raised, the need to know some of those core pieces of how your facilities are set up. I see a few folks typing here. So I'll hold tight to wait for those questions to come in. Again, I think this presentation was a really nice way to reinforce some of the content that you all received as a part of the in-person training back in May, and we had a great demonstration of different types of PPE to wear. So it's good to have this kind of reinforcement via this program, too. OK, great. Yeah, thank you to folks from University of Washington. I'll make sure I take note of that. Do we even have any other questions specific to the content? I'm seeing much coming in. So I'll just go ahead and say big thank you to Al and to Tara. It's wonderful to have both of your perspectives brought to this important topic. And of course, this will be recorded if anyone wants to check out the program after the fact. And then, like I mentioned at the beginning of today's presentation, we're going to be switching gears next month when we pick up the programs once again. We'll be starting with painting salvage as our first topic. So looking forward to doing those kind of deeper dives. But thank you to everyone for attending today. And I will be in touch with you all soon.