 All right. So thank you all for joining us for today's webinar. This is, of course, the seventh in this eight-part series. It's complimenting your in-person training for the Miami Heritage Response Team. These programs are made possible through the generous grant funding support of the National Endowment for the Humanities. It seems like a while since we held our last session on fundraising, and certainly a lot has happened in those intervening weeks. I hope that you found the topics we've covered previously to be useful as you prepared for and responded to Hurricane Irma. Clearly, that storm has altered our schedule a bit. A reminder that we'll be holding our final webinar program on furniture salvage following our in-person meeting next week. So be sure to mark your calendars for that final webinar, which will take place on Wednesday, November 15th at 2 p.m. Our original instructor for that program was heavily involved with the response to Hurricane Harvey in Houston. So we've found a new presenter for that session. Before we begin today's presentation, just a quick refresher of technical notes. On your screen, you'll see several boxes, including one labeled chat on the left-hand side. You can use the chat box to say hello, ask questions, share any information. If you post a question in the chat box, you'll receive a response from me. Any questions will be noted, collected, and then I will verbally ask them of our presenter during a break in the presentation. Today, we also have a web links box. So reminder, you can just click on the link to highlight it in blue and then click on the browse to button to visit the site. With that, I'm very pleased to introduce you all to our presenter, Al Barna. Al is the Occupational Health and Safety Officer at the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, so that's the De 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 Climate Liaison for the City and County of San Francisco's Departmental Climate Action Plan. Al is a trained volunteer with the National Heritage Responders Group and 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'd like to turn things over to Al for his presentation on health and safety after a disaster. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for participating this morning. This is my first webinar, so I'm really looking forward to it. And first of all, I hope you can all hear me. And today I'll just give you a brief overview. OK, great. Here's a brief overview of what we'll be discussing today. Talk about the three types of disasters, regional and collection considerations prior to a disaster, the importance of an emergency response plan, safety training that's geared towards emergency response, we'll also go into detail about personal protective equipment, discuss risk and exposures after disasters, talk a little bit about the global harmonization standard, which you probably are all aware of, and we'll wrap it up by talking about immediate hazards after a disaster. OK, so the first slide I want to show you is the one of the first type of disaster we'll discuss briefly is natural disasters, things like earthquakes and floods and hurricanes. And in this slide, you see a photo of the aftermath of the San Francisco earthquake and fire in 1906. And superimposed on that is a scan of the journal page that one of our registrars found from the morning of the earthquake in 1906. And I don't know if you can read it. Most of the journal entries discuss the weather for that particular day. But it says 5.15 a.m. Wednesday, April 18, 1906, terrific earthquake, which demolished the building and destroyed many of the exhibits. Science John W. Rogers Curator Museum closed indefinitely. And the next journal entry that we can find for the De Young Museum was not made until November 10th in 1907. So you can see there, we don't have a lot of records and there are certainly no safety information about what actually happened to the building from an internal source. And then the next type of disaster is a human-caused disaster. This is a fire that resulted from a tanker truck explosion. Follow that with accidents. That's the third type of disaster. This is actually, it might seem a little peculiar, but this is an accident that occurred in front of our De Young Museum where Gardner's golf cart collided with the light pole. It was interesting because the Gardner was raining, warm, rainy morning. His eyeglasses and his windshield bobbed up and he drove right into the pole. And you can see the windows on the building itself. Just made me think, well, this is just the kind of freak accident that nobody would plan for. And what would have happened if he had actually come through one of our large glass windows? It would have played every taboo with our humidity and temperature systems, our climate control. How would we prepare for something like this? Can you even prepare for something like this? So those are some of the things we like to talk about this morning. So the first thing I thought we should talk about are regional considerations, depending on what part of the country you live in. You are going to be exposed to different types of natural disasters. For instance, here in California, we have earthquakes. You can see these fault lines and these aren't all, but they are some of the fault lines that run through the Bay Area. And basically that tells us that we can expect and anticipate seismic activity at any time. And fault slippage on a fault line can range anywhere from one inch to more than 10 yards in a severe earthquake. So for us, it's a question of when and not if we know we're going to have earthquakes. So we try to build that into our emergency response system. Again, we have earthquakes in California and on the West Coast in general. And I know you've also had one in Washington, D.C. a few years ago. And you can see historically where earthquakes have occurred in the Bay Area and throughout the state of California. And we also have 840 miles of coastline here in California. So any earthquake that were to take place under the Pacific Ocean floor has the potential to create a tsunami. So in planning our emergency response for that kind of event, we look for resources to tell us what the likelihood of tsunami waters reaching the museum would be. And this map is put out a regional map kind of this is where the museum is located in Golden Gate Park or the museum is out here in Lincoln Park. And you can see that we are not theoretically in a tsunami zone. So that's one less worry that we have, although there are other issues that can arise from tsunamis like fires and things like that. And in the Florida area, you have to worry about hurricanes, which certainly in everybody's mind recently. And here is a chart that shows historically how many hurricanes have hit the coast down near Florida. So you can see again, it's not a matter of what if, but it's a matter of when we're going to have that type of disaster. We'll talk about collection considerations. You need to consider the type of the nature of your collections when you're developing an emergency response plan. If you know what your collections are going to need in terms of protection, it's going to be a lot easier to prepare for that and also to do salvage and recovery operations. Again, if you have a herpetology collection, that's going to be very different than say a textile and two-dimensional art collection or three-dimensional objects. Here is a suit of armor. And another consideration is when you've got objects that are on exhibition that are on loan, that's going to be something you're going to have to think about. How are you going to protect these objects that are on loan and maintain your credibility with other lending institutions? And then something I wanted to talk about is the importance of the emergency response plan because you actually by law have to have an emergency response plan. You have to have a written and oral emergency response plan that must be in writing and kept in the workplace and available to employees for review. However, if you're an employer with 10 or fewer workers, you can communicate the plan orally. Some of you might be independent contractors as well, but an emergency response plan is a good resource for how you're going to respond to a disaster after the fact. So we have trouble with this slide. Like, anyway, I can tell you that the keys to an effective emergency plan are, first of all, you want a written plan that has management support. You want to provide staff training and drills based on the plan, feedback from all of your stakeholders, and you want to continuously improve the written plan. Some of the elements that should be included in your response plan are as follows. You want to have a means of reporting emergencies. Who's responsible for contacting first responders? Who calls 911? Is that going to be your security department? Is it going to be your engineering department? That should be determined in advance. You want to establish your evacuation procedures and your emergency escape route assignments. You'd also want to have a designated emergency assembly area for all of your staff. And that helps with the next bullet point, which is accountability. You want to know that your people are accounted for. You want to have people designated for all of your rescue and medical duties that may arise from the emergency. And you should have a list of emergency contacts, again, people that will provide first response for your institution. At the Fine Arts Museums, we have, this is basically what we have in our emergency plan. Eight sections. There's the introduction, obviously. Staff emergency procedures. That means what we do in the event of an earthquake, fire, power outage, even things like an active shooter is the incident. You should have an organized emergency response charge. So people know what to do in a situation, even if it's not their actual job. If you happen to be working on a graveyard shift and you're the only people in the building are security people. If you have an emergency response chart, they can step into any position at least on the most basic level and respond to the emergency. We also include a whole section on art handling procedures so that people who are not trained as art handlers will have some basic information on how things should be handled safely. Until people with the experience and the authority arrive on scene, we provide a menu of different trainings that will be advantageous or useful for emergency response. We also have a section on recovery and salvage. Then we have a section on fact sheets, which we'll talk a little more about. We have floor plans, information about things in the museum that can be used in an emergency situation. And we also keep a list of offsite resources, which means our contractors, the building architects, engineering firms that we use, all of our vendors, so that we can maintain those links with people during and after an emergency situation. We have an emergency response organization chart, which is a little different than our standard staff emergency chart. Here you'll have people higher up in the chart who are actually going to be hands-on to an emergency response. After your chief administrator, you can have your engineering department, your emergency plan coordinator, your security department, safety, and on down the line. Things like finance and your IT people are also going to be involved in your response, but they might be a little lower down the chart, because they're not the people that are going to know how to respond to an actual emergency while it's happening, in most cases. Also in our plan, we have what we call an action checklist, and this is just a sample of a page for what the responsibilities in this position would be. This is the director of facilities position, and it has a line of succession for who information is going to be handed down to, and it's just a basic checklist of what the person in that position we need to do in an emergency situation. So again, this can be used by anybody in the museum who happens to be available until they're relieved by somebody with more responsibility. As far as fact sheets, we include things like floor plans. You want to have a floor plan that clearly shows the locations of all of your utility shutoffs, your firefighting equipment, how there's material storage locations, even your storm drains, and where you have your first aid kits located. These plans can be shared with your local emergency responders, the fire department, the police department. It helps them know what we have in the building and where it's located, so that basically expedites their response. Another example of what you want in your fact sheets perhaps is a map of where your utility controls are so that you know where all of your utility shutoffs are located. And I know this has been discussed in previous webinars, but the emergency response and salvage wheel, which can now be downloaded as a free app, is a great tool, and it's something we encourage all of our staff to have on their cell phones, so that presented with an emergency situation, they can at least do a minimum of salvage work for us. We also have what we call crash cards, and these are emergency response kits for the artwork, and in these kits we keep different materials. We have nitrile gloves, cotton cleaning cloths, N95 dusk mask, duct tape, blue painter's tape, caution tape, sponges, polyethylene sheeting. The list goes on and on. We have absorbent socks. Anything that might be used in an art response situation. And then these cards are located in strategic places throughout both of our museums. And also, another fact sheet you might want to think about is if you use radios in your institution, there should be certain protocols that everybody is on board with. You want to have an established emergency channel, because most radio systems have an array of channels, but you want everybody to get to the same channel on an emergency. So channel one is our emergency response channel. Everybody can dial in channel one, be on the same channel. I always want to avoid unnecessary radio transmissions when you're in the middle of an emergency situation or an evacuation. The amount of chatter can really have an impact on how communications are going and what kind of information is being put out. So you want to avoid any unnecessary chatter. Somebody leaves their purse behind in the gallery. That's really not important at that time. So you would refrain from contributing that kind of information. And you should always identify yourself on a radio transmission, because your voice might assume that everybody recognizes your voice, but it's going to sound different over the radio. So it's good protocol to identify yourself. And something that has become pretty standard after 9-11 of incidents was the avoidance of 10 codes. 10-4, 10-7. And 7 means I'm on break. We hear that one a lot. 10-4 means yes, OK. Well, if you eliminate the 10 codes and speak plainly and clearly, that way all contributing emergency responding units are on the same page, because not all 10 codes are set up the same. So that's sort of been eliminated. And you just use plain speaking now. So 10 codes are no longer used in emergency situations. And you should always do radio check when you sign it out in the morning so that you know your radio is actually improperly working on it. And you also should try and set up a staff emergency information line. This really helps staff to stay abreast of developing incidents. It can mean that there's between coming into work or staying home in an emergency situation. So we use this to communicate with all of our staff. You can also use an internet system, web page, Twitter account, anything to get the message out to your staff, because if you don't want people coming to work and if certain people would actually be a hindrance based on the department they work for, you better have them outside. Another good idea is to get to know your local firefighters and first responders. You can host an informational social event where they can learn about your collections and their value to the community. The more familiar they are with your collections and what they represent, the better job they're going to be able to do of responding to an emergency in your facility without creating extra damage to your collections. And as far as offsite resources, you want to create a resource list that might include all of your vendors and service providers, as well as emergency agencies on the federal, state and city level. And with your vendors, if you can arrange an exclusive service or priority service contract agreement, that's really highly recommended, especially for conservation work. If you use somebody like Bell for one of the restoration services, if you have an exclusive agreement with them, it could help you get equipment much faster than you might ordinarily. Because if a disaster is regional in scope, equipment like freezer trucks, things like that are going to be a little harder to get. So for some extra money, you can actually enter into an agreement with restoration companies or priority service. Once you do all of that, hopefully the goal is to create a coordinated response where everything meshes and works as a fine-tuning machine. That's the objective. And as far as training goes, you can, by training, you eliminate a lot of doubt and questions while you're actually responding to an emergency. So obviously you want to always encourage fire drills. You should have at least two per year. If you have a building that's over 75 feet tall, it's considered a high-rise, so you might consider a high-rise fire safety training. Affordable fire extinguishing use training is always very helpful. How you respond to a power outage. Earthquake safety is very big for us here in California. You should constantly drill on your emergency evacuation procedures because people do forget where they're supposed to go and what they're supposed to do. You want to eliminate that kind of debate. And another thing is CPR and AED first aid training is also very important for response. And again, your art handling procedures should be something that you can train all of your staff on your custodial staff, your security staff, your admissions people, because they all might be called upon to respond to an emergency where we have to protect our collection. So here we have the acronym PAS, which, if you've never used a fire extinguisher before, knowing this acronym will actually help you use it. So PAS stands for pull, aim, squeeze, and sweep. And what you want to do here is pull the pin that is like a cotter pin type device in the handle of the fire extinguisher. You aim the nozzle at the base of the fire. You squeeze handle, trigger, and then you sweep the nozzle at the base of the fire and pass the fire as well. You always want to attack fire with fire extinguisher from the base of the fire. You never want to attack a fire from the top of the fire because it will push the flames out at you in certain situations. The last thing you need to do is to get yourself caught on fire when you're trying to respond to a small emergency. And remember that fire extinguishers really are designed for fires limited to the size of a newspaper basket, perhaps. So this kind of training is good because it helps people understand where a fire extinguisher is actually practical to try and use as opposed to evacuate the building and call the fire department. One of the best things you can do for yourself and your family and your coworkers is to be certified in CPR and AED or state training. AEDs, the defibrillators, most institutions now have AEDs on site. We have a number of them and we've actually used them effectively a number of times in the last few years. But if you know CPR, in a high stress situation, people may have medical emergencies, it'll help you to actually help them. And it just gives you a level of confidence that it's actually kind of surprising. But in any emergency, remember that you need to call 911 immediately before any other response because you want to get first responders rolling as soon as possible because every minute saves lives and saves time. We'll talk a little bit about good Samaritan laws because when we talk about CPR, a lot of people are very uncomfortable with it because they're not sure what their liabilities are going to be. And basically, there are good Samaritan laws that cover people who actually offer assistance or render aid in a medical emergency situation. There are some things to remember, for instance, you need to receive permission from the injured party or the ill party before you can even touch them. If they cannot give you permission and if they do not have a companion with them, grant permission, it's assumed that you would want someone to render assistance to you. So that's what you're going to do and you're going to render assistance to the best of your ability or at least what you're trained to do and you're protected from any kind of legal lawsuits that might arise from this. So if your assistance actually ends up injuring somebody more extensively, if you try it in all consciousness to assist them, you are protected by law. The good Samaritan laws are similar, but there are some differences state by state. So you can always check with the state you live in for what the good Samaritan laws actually cover. One of the important things to remember is that if you do render assistance, you need to continue until you are relieved by someone else or a medical responder. You can't walk away from the situation. So unless you are physically unable to continue, if you're exhausted, that's excusable. But if you abandon the person that you're rendering aid to, all of the good Samaritan laws go out the window and you will be liable for a lawsuit. Okay, we'll talk about personal protective equipment or PPE. You can see these are old WPA posters that were done during Franklin Delano Roosevelt's administration back in the early 30s. So the concept of personal protective equipment has been around quite some time. The first thing you need to do is a hazard assessment to determine what kind of risk and exposures you're going to be exposed to. That will determine what type of personal protective equipment you're going to need. You can see in a situation like this, you're going to need quite a bit of personal protective equipment. Here's a man working on that building. There are basically five categories of personal protective equipment. You have foot protection, hand protection, eye protection, head protection, and body protection, and respiratory protection as well. Here is where it gets a little tricky. A lot of people wear respirators without medical certification. So that can be really harmful to your health if you have an unknown condition or even a known condition. If you have a respiratory condition or a heart ailment, using a respirator puts a lot of stress on your system more than usual. So you can actually expedite a medical emergency for yourself. So you need to get medical clearance to wear a respirator. You have to make sure that it's fit tested, that it fits properly. If you have a respiratory protection program, you have to have a written program as well. That's required by OSHA. And you can get all of that information from OSHA's website and by looking at the standard. So basically what you have to have in your respiratory protection program is the written plan, medical clearance, training on how to doth, don, and use the equipment, the respirator. You have to have a fit test done and you have to have all of this in your records. You have to keep records on all aspects of your respiratory protection program. And the best advice I can give you about respirators is don't use them if you don't have to. If you've got any kind of mechanical ventilation systems, if you have fume hoods, elephant trunks, good mechanical ventilations in your buildings, there's a possibility you don't actually even need a respirator. So it's good to have an industrial hygienist do a baseline survey for you based on what kind of chemicals or products you're going to be using and what kind of ventilation systems you have in your buildings. Talk about hand protection. This is a photo. This is actually from the Conservation Recovery Center in Brooklyn that was set up by the FAIC after Hurricane Sandy. You have hand protection basically means the different types of gloves that you're going to wear. And there is a whole range of gloves that are designed for different types of protections. Industrial work like this or lifting crates you want to use. Something fairly heavy. You might have to have gloves that are puncture proof. They're chemical resistant. All of that information can be found online. Most of your vendors will have misinformation. There are charts available that tell you what type of hand protection is required for the type of work you're going to be doing. So it's good to know that not all gloves are created equal and many of them are designed for very specific uses. These are the things that are covered in the standard. This is the ANSI, ISEA. ANSI is the American National Standards Institute. And the ISEA is the International Safety Equipment Association. OSHA does not design equipment or they don't even design the requirements. They basically, well, I'm sorry, they do design the requirements. But other manufacturers and other organizations are trusted to make sure that the standard is upheld but with the actual product. So what you need to look for in your hand protection and gloves is you need mechanical protection or chemical protection, chemical degradation, heat and flame protection, abrasion resistance, hole protection down the line. And all of these things are rated and the information is available for any glove that you purchase. And protection is another type of personal protective equipment that's very important. And there are two standards that govern head protection. And when we talk about head protection, essentially we're talking about hard hats. And hard hats are rated for their shock absorbency. They're rated for their conductive or non-conductive with electricity. So, again, not all hard hats are created equal. And here are the standards that govern hard hats. And this information, the name of the manufacturer, what the standard, what the hard hat conforms with, what class designation it has. And the class G or C are basically, that relates to the conductivity of the helmet itself. Size range for fitting and the data was manufactured. All of that information will be found inside of the helmet in this highlighted section or the circle section. That is all the information that you need to know about the type of helmet you're wearing, what it's rated, what use it's rated for. That helmet, by the way, standard equipment for FAIC National Heritage Responders Group. Foot protection is another concern. And this is something I always talk to our conservators about is that, you know, once you get into a building, if the building's been red tagged and you're finally allowed in after a disaster, there's going to be, in most cases, there's going to be debris, there's going to be broken glass, there might be, you know, lots of physical hazards that would involve your feet. So, you want to make sure that you're wearing proper footwear. And again, the standard for footwear is found in OSHA's section 1910.136. And footwear is rated for different type of uses. It's not all the same. For instance, I'll show you the circle there. The line, the circle section is a tag which you'll find inside of the shoe. And that tells you what shoe is rated for and what it can be used for. So, let's go line by line here. Line 1 tells you that it does comply with the standard which is the ASTM F2413. And that standard is fairly new since about 2011. Line 2 tells you that the M stands for male or if it's an F it's female or the user. It also identifies the existence of impact resistance. The impact resistance rating, which is 75 foot pounds for this shoe, is compression resistance, which is represented by the letter C. And the compression resistance rating, which is represented by the number 75. And that correlates to 2500 pounds of compression. And the metatarsal designation M and the rating is also identified as 75 foot pounds. So, again, when you're selecting a work boot, this is what you're looking for. There are additional information that we don't see on this tag because certain shoes are rated for different types of electrostatic protection, electrical non-conductivity. So, you need to look at the tag before you buy a pair of work boots. And of course, they should always be steel toe. Hearing protection is also another element of PPE. And like most of these written programs, we're talking about require a written program. So, the same thing with a hearing protection program. You need to have a written program that covers the purpose of the program, what your policy about hearing protection is, the scope of the requirements, the summary of the regulatory requirements, designated responsibilities for running the program. You have to have a system for monitoring employee noise exposures. For instance, you should probably have an industrial hygienist come in and do a baseline of what your decibel levels are like in your building. In an emergency situation, that can change drastically. You need to have a section that talks about how you control noise exposures. Again, you have to have audiometric testing done before you can wear protective equipment. They'll do a baseline of what your hearing capabilities are and monitor that on a yearly basis. You have to provide training and how to wear protective ear equipment. And you have to maintain records as well. So again, most of the hearing protection standard covers these elements. They monitor for continuous intermittent or impulse noises. You want to know what the permissible exposure levels are based on the work you're doing and the decibel level involved. And all of that's factored into what's known as a TWA, which is a time-weighted average. So you can determine what type of protection you need over a period of time if you're working in loud noise area for four hours or eight hours. All of that is factored into the type of protection that you would select. And eye protection is very much the same thing. There are different types of goggles and glasses that are available. Depending on the work you're doing, you might want something that does not include side vents. If you're working with chemicals and liquids, side vents are an entry for splashes. So you use the splash protection. Again, they're rated for the use as well as the type of impacts that they're designed for. So you very carefully have packaging or catalogs before you select eye protection. And some of the things that eye protection is rated for are, again, chemical resistance, its impact or non-impact, and the optical radiation protection. That's something that would factor in if you're doing welding. They're working in bright light sources, high heat sources. That would be something you'd look for in your eye protection. So now that we've gone through all of that, here we see protective clothing. And this man's wearing a Tyvek suit, which is pretty standard protection, regardless of what you're working with, chemicals, dust, molds, construction work. You'll be wearing protective clothing. Again, a Tyvek suit is pretty versatile and pretty durable. And if you're wondering, I was going to ask you if you see anything wrong with this picture. And since I don't see a show of hands, I'll tell you that no, there's nothing wrong with this picture. This man is wearing all of the personal protective equipment that you can possibly want, including fall protection. He's got his own individual fall protection harness on as well. Okay, we'll talk about risk and exposures. What happens when different scenarios of flooding and water damage is something that can result... Flooding can be the result of hurricanes, tropical storms, excessive rain, earthquakes, and rapidly melting snowpack. In most disasters, you have waters going to factor in in some way. It doesn't matter if it's a fire, an earthquake, a flood, there will be water present. Water damage can create significant electrical hazards, sitting behind soap deposits, mud, and debris, and toxic stew of raw sewage, fuel, and chemicals. So you have to be aware of all that. Once the water recedes, as some of you probably know very well right now, that's when a real heartache and memory begins sometimes, because you see what's left behind and it's never clean. When water recedes, it's going to be a mess. You have to worry about things like, in terms of responding, you have to worry about flat tires because there's going to be glass and nails and sharp objects everywhere on roadways and people's driveways. You have to worry about red-tag buildings that you're not going to have access to for days or weeks or even months sometime. And then what the mud-choked heating equipment, it just goes on and on. If you've ever experienced a flood and it's aftermath, you're very familiar with this. But I know there are people who are in an impression that water just goes away and things dry out, but I think as conservators, you know a lot better than that. So one of the things with water damage, obviously, is mold. And there's always the risk of mold developing on paper, carboning, furniture, wood and sheetrock. And they can be caused, mold outbreaks are usually caused by high humidity and water damage. Mold quickly can cause irreversible damage to paper and library collections. Many types of mold are a documented hazard to human health as well. It should be handled by trained professionals with personal protective equipment. And the nature of mold is there are over 100,000 species of fungi. So mold spores are present everywhere in our environment and they're generally in a dormant state where they don't do any damage at all. But they do require moisture to become active. They do not require light to become active. They require moisture. So when you have water or high relative humidity, that provides the necessary moisture and the dormant spores will germinate. They'll grow like fine web-like structures and eventually produce what they call what's known as fruiting bodies that release more spores. Most molds will germinate at 65% relative humidity and increases in temperature can speed the growth of mold even more. So you need to be able to identify a mold and the mold moves come in many colors and it's often confused with dust or dirt or boxing or cobwebs. And both active and inactive mold can have a distinctive smell which most people will describe as a musty odor. Active mold in its early stages is not a biohazard but it can be accompanied by evidence of biological waste contaminations like in a flood situation. When that happens you need to be aware of it and again that's where personal protective equipment comes in very handy. And the information I'm giving you comes from the Harvard Library Preservation Services in regards to mold. So some of the mold hazards that you'll deal with are I think we just went through that, excuse me. So mold protection is something you want to be able to be aware of. The key engineering controls in work practice for dealing with mold are that you should discard all water damage materials and any materials that are visibly coated with mold that cannot be properly cleaned. Forest materials, carpeting, drywall insulation. Anything that's been wet for more than 48 hours can be discarded. Of course we're not talking about artwork and collections. Those items like sheetrock and carpet should be wrapped and sealed and discarded in plastic bags or use polyethylene sheeting to create containers for it. And they can generally be discarded as ordinary debris. If you're working in a mold situation you want to minimize dust disturbances to reduce the spread of the fungal spores. Never eat, drink or smoke in work areas where a mold is present. You want to be able to provide natural or local exhaust ventilation during all of the cleaning steps involved. You want to, well I won't talk about how you handle mold as conservators because I think you already know that. And I know some of the webinars have talked about these things. And as far as personal protective equipment, if you're working with mold you want to use at least an N or R or P95 rated respirator. Either a half face or full face NR or P95 respirator for areas smaller than 100 square feet for areas greater than 100 square feet where mold is heavy like a blanket during cleaning or debris removal. You want to use a full face respirator if at all possible. And with a respirator if you want to make sure you have a charcoal and pregnered filter combination filter so that will also remove some odors for you and be a little more comfortably used. And you should all again use non-venting goggles when you're working with mold. And protective clothing, again you should wear disposable coveralls to prevent cross-contamination in skin contact with mold and other chemicals. And for areas greater than 100 square feet you should ensure that protective clothing covers your entire body including your head and your feet. And long gloves made of material that will protect users from chemicals handled or surface cleaning should also be used. Okay fire, fire produces a lot of problematic conditions for everybody. You're going to, fire obviously produces smoke and smoke produces soot. So just as smoke contains carbon monoxide and methane, volatile or organic compounds, formaldehyde, benzene, acetic acid, formic acid, tau lean, organic carbon and the list goes on and on. That's what you're going to find in smoke and in soot. And smoke is actually the result of incomplete combustion. Smoke releases carbon particulate into the air. Those are the particulates that are known as soot. And in the aftermath of a fire soot will be deposited on surface within fire damage structure. So far as soot and soot removal goes, some of the hazards associated with soot are respiratory and dermal exposure. Soot is an irritant to your lung. It's an irritant issue and to your skin. You can protect yourself by utilizing the following practices. So when you're working with a soot abatement, again do not eat drink or smoke in a soot contaminant area or around soot damage materials. You should wear an air purifying respirator with appropriate filter cartridges. The best cartridge for using with mold is known as a CBRN cartridge. It stands for chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear cartridge. You use a HEPA vacuum to remove soot residue and wear safety glasses and wear a pair of nitrile gloves and remove them really carefully. Remove them like nurses remove gloves or doctor removes gloves after an examination so that your skin is not coming in contact with the exterior surface of the glove at any time. And keep your hands away from your... Sorry about that. I apologize. Wear a pair of nitrile gloves and when you remove them you still keep your hands away from your face, your mouth and your eyes so that you eliminate those as exposure routes. And practice good hygiene at all times. Whenever you're done working you want to wash your hands thoroughly with soap and warm water. That will help protect you from any of the health hazards associated with mold. Okay, talk about chemical spills and releases. This is something that also occurs quite often in the aftermath of a disaster. And I doubt if most of us are working with chemicals on the scale here, like 50 gallon drums, but we do have small amounts of chemicals in most of our laboratories. And in the photo here you see some chemicals and things that are labeled entirely incorrectly. There's no way to really know what are in these bottles. If you write down a chemical name on a piece of basking tape and apply it to the bottle it's going to fade and eventually the poor person who has to handle these things and dispose of them isn't really going to know what's inside the bottles. So there's something called the Global Harmonization Standard that the United States of America has finally signed on to. I think we were the last country to do so. It's an international agreement for how chemicals are labeled and how information about chemicals is disseminated. So this is what container labeling requirements used to look like, where you had a basic manufacturer's name, a personal protective equipment was needed to wear around these chemicals and what the chemical itself was. But the new standard includes a lot more information. Actually it's a lot more concise information. And what you have here are there are six required elements for chemical labels now. Number one is the product identifier. It tells you what chemical is. Number two is a signal word. There are two signal words, danger and caution. And that tells you the degree of danger that this chemical can create for you. Number three is the use of pictograms to describe what the chemical is actually capable of. So here you have a pictogram for severe toxicity, flammability. The right hand side is serious health issues. And the icon with the hand is corrosiveness. So those are good visual guidelines for you to know what's involved with using that chemical. There are training requirements that come with a global harmonization system. You have to train people on the elements of the label. Material safety data sheets are now called safety data sheets and they're in a uniform 16-part format. So they're much easier to read now. It's a uniform system used throughout the world. And all of the organization has to be listed in the same chronology. And anytime you bring in a new chemical into your facility, you have to identify what the physical and health hazards are. And you also have to train your staff when you bring in an initial new chemical. You have to train them how to use it for their initial assignment. And also whenever a new chemical is brought into the building, you have to make sure that everyone's aware of what that is. You also need to have a written hazard communication program known as a HASCOM program. That's a notion requirement as well. And it requires employees who use chemicals or hazards materials to create an inventory of all of your hazards materials used in the workplace. Ensure that labeling is done properly. You have to have a database of your safety data sheets and you have to keep them filed for reference. That should be done. You should have a central location for your data sheets as well as each area where the chemicals are being used should have a safety data, a right to no station. RTK stands for right to no. So that you have quick and ready access to the information sheets if you have a chemical spill. And again, you need to have a written hazard communication program. Some of the immediate hazards during and after a disaster are things like glass. For instance, you should know where you have large glass areas in your facilities. This is a skylight at our Legion of Honor facility because in the event of emergency, hurricanes, earthquakes, there's a very good possibility that glass is going to be broken and then it becomes a hazard. So with some of the hazards are lacerations, cuts, infections. So again, this is where personal protective equipment comes in handy. This is where you want to know what you're going to need to work with the kind of damage that you're confronted with. And something I'd like to add is that with broken glass, it needs to be cleaned up. It's a good idea to invest in non-sparking tools if at all possible. That includes shovels, wrenches, pliers. They're fairly expensive, but they do not spark. And the value of that is if you have a gas leak that's happening simultaneously with the rest of all the other issues you might be dealing with in a disaster, at least the spark, the non-sparking tools will not spark, create a natural gas explosion. So non-sparking tools are definitely something to consider. Another risk and exposure is falling objects during an earthquake or in a big storm. Things can fall. So it's always a good idea to have all of your materials stored and secured, strapped to secure walls, storage systems. And same thing with shelving units. You can strap containers into your shelving units. I prefer this type of strapping over bungee cords. Bungee cords have a tendency to fail and they become a real eye hazard. So at the risk of losing an eye, I think you're much better off with strapping with buckles and nylon straps. Bungee cords will work and they are effective up until the day they break. And you should always put all of your, store your heavier objects on lower shelves and lighter objects on higher shelves. And that's something out in earthquake country we preach that all the time. Having a map that shows where your utility shut off locations are is very important during and after an emergency. You want to know where the locations are for shutting off your water or your gas and your electricity. Having a site plan which shows where your exterior shutoffs are on the perimeter of your building also is a huge help. And all of this information can be forwarded to your local emergency responders and fire department. If you are required by your municipality to have a hazard communication plan, all of this information goes on their hazard communication, their hazard response truck. So they have this information available as they're actually rolling to your location. And I think this adds another layer of protection to your collections policies and how you protect your policies. I think occupational health and safety in a cultural institution does provide another layer of safety for your collections. After an emergency disaster, you want to be able to inspect your utility so therefore if you know where they are because you have a map, you can inspect them for leaks or broken water pipes. And when you do that, with a gas leak, for instance, you will hear it and you will smell it because natural gas has an odor added to it. But usually a gas leak, you will hear a hissing sound or a whooshing sound coming from the pipe because it's under such high pressure and if it sprung a leak, you're going to hear that. You need to inspect your utilities and this diagram shows you how a standard gas line can be shut off when the pipe is in a vertical position, when the valve is in a vertical position, it means that the gas line is on and when it's in a horizontal position, basically when it goes across the pipe, you have, you know, you shut the gas off so you can be certain that you've done it properly. You want to label all of your pipes throughout your building. This is a domestic cold water line. Your sewage lines, they should be labeled. So again, emergency responders have an easier time finding them. Your building engineers can perform emergency shutdown work quicker because it's so much easier to identify what those lines do and where they go. You have to worry about electrical hazards any time you have a disaster, earthquake floods, particularly floods, because just even generally just lightly damp wet floors can conduct electricity. So you would inspect all of your areas for electrical hazards. Something to be very careful about wading through floodwaters is never a good idea because you can be exposing yourself to a live wire that's actually being conducted through the water. And not all electrical hazards will be as obvious as this one. Believe it or not, this light switch actually works, but you need to be aware of electrical hazards as well. And the last thing I want to talk about is something that hadn't occurred to me really as part of emergency response until watching the news and reading about the hurricanes in Texas, in Florida, and in Venezuela. You have warmer climates in most areas. You're not going to be doing your salvage work and conservation work inside the building that's been damaged. You're more likely going to be outside. And if you're in a high-heat area, you need to worry about heat illnesses and disorders that are related to heat illnesses. So I'd like to finish up by talking about that a little bit. Start with the most minor of heat disorders barring sunburn, which is heat cramps. This will be one of the first things that happens to you if you are dehydrated and you're being exposed to too much heat and sun. And you can see what the symptoms are and what the first-aid treatment is as well. I don't think I have time to go through them point-by-point, but it's pretty obvious first-aid and all of this information can be found on the American Red Cross website. If you have a safety department in your institution, they should be able to provide this information. And OSHA does have a heat illness prevention program now, which is not only designed to... Most people assume it's designed for agricultural workers, but it includes anybody who works outdoors for even a short period of time. You have to provide them with adequate protections from heat illnesses. So again, if you're doing salvage work outside, there are certain things you want to be aware of. The next stage of a heat illness would be heat exhaustion. This is a little more serious than heat cramps. You see what the symptoms of the first-aid are for that. And the most serious is heat stroke and when this sets in, it's a life-threatening condition. You will notice that someone is confused. They might faint. Excess is sweating or red hot dry skin or indicators that someone might be experiencing heat stroke. And the first aid for this is you definitely need to call 911 immediately because this is a life-threatening condition. You want to remove that worker and get them into a shady area. Use their clothing and outer clothing. They're cool and wet. Do not administer fluids at this point because if they're going to need emergency medical treatment, having fluids in your system can delay the treatment that you're about to receive. And you want to stay with that worker until help arrives. Never leave somebody alone who's in this condition. So the way to prevent this, and this goes for anybody, even on your free time or on a concert, any kind of event. The way to prevent heat illness is by staying hydrated. Make sure you have access to shade even if that's a sun hat. You want to have some shade. Then there's the concept of acclimatization. Workers can acclimatize themselves to working in heat conditions a little at a time. So it's important to not send somebody out to have doors at all because they're not going to have enough time to acclimatize to that intense heat. When we talk about heat, most of these standards for heat illness prevention kick in at the temperature of 85 degrees or higher. Then you have high heat standards that kick in at 95 degrees. The most important way to avoid heat illness injuries for people or illnesses is through training, employee training. I have a heat illness training program and I'm happy to share that with any of you if you think that's something you're interested in. I can be reached at the email address that you see here. I'm happy to share any resources or information that I have with all of you. That concludes my presentation for today and I'd like to thank you for staying with me and all your time and attention. Thank you very much. That was excellent. Thank you so much, Al. We have just a couple of moments if anyone has any questions for Al. It's very generous of you to provide your email address there if there are follow-ups. This is a very important topic. I see Bethany wrote in to say that heat was a huge issue for them and I'm assuming that was in the Irma response. Thank you for addressing that important point here. We're running later than expected and that is my fault. I apologize for the technical issues at the start of the program. Thank you for your perseverance to everyone who attended and thank you, Al, for your patience as well. I'm not seeing anyone typing but I know we are going to be discussing this topic a lot more during our in-person training next week so perhaps during that conversation we'll come up with some more questions to discuss as a group. So with that I will just say thank you so much to Al for putting together this really wonderful presentation for our group. I know it was like I said a very important topic for everyone but also very engaging as well. And thank you to everyone who joined in the session today. I will be emailing you all with a couple of messages about the incoming components of our training but again, thanks to everyone and I will be in touch soon.