 Hello everyone, and thank you for joining us for today's webinar on Risk Assessment for Cultural Institutions. My name is Jessica Unger, and I'm the Emergency Programs Coordinator at the Foundation of the American Institute for Conservation. I will be serving as technical support for today's program, and I'm happy to address any questions you may have. Today's webinar has been organized by the American Institute for Conservation's Emergency Committee. The Emergency Committee aims to promote awareness and increase knowledge of the AIC membership in the areas of emergency preparedness, response, and recovery for cultural heritage. Thank you to all of the committee members who have worked to make this program possible, particularly the committee co-chairs, Katie Wagner, and Becca Kennedy. Before we begin the program, I wanted to share some technical notes. On your screen, you'll see several boxes, including one labeled chat on the left-hand side. You can use that chat box to say hello, ask questions, and share any information that you'd like. If you post a question in the chat box, you'll receive a written response from me. Any questions will be noted, collected, and then I will verbally ask them of our presenters at the conclusion of the presentation. Our presenters have prepared resources to accompany today's webinar. Please refer to the web links box at the bottom right-hand corner of your screen. Click on one of these resources to highlight it in blue, and then click the Browse To button to be taken directly to that site. All of these resources have also been captured in a handout available in the box labeled Files to the left of the links box. Simply click on the resource handout and then click the Download File button to save a copy to your computer. With that, I'm very pleased to introduce you all to today's presenters. Susan Dool is a professional associate of the AIC and serves on the AIC Emergency Committee. Susan is also a team member of the National Heritage Responders and serves on the National Heritage Responders Working Group, programs that are managed by the foundation of the AIC. Susan teaches disaster protection and recovery worldwide, including in Puerto Rico, Nepal, and Greece. Bob Herskovitz is also a professional associate of the AIC and likewise serves on the AIC Emergency Committee. Bob was one of the first group of individuals trained to serve as National Heritage Responders, and has presented numerous workshops on disaster response. He also provided input on the development of both the emergency response and salvage wheel, as well as the field guide to emergency response. Syrah Hakee is a member of the AIC and is currently serving as a book and paper conservator at the Minnesota Historical Society, where she is also responsible for updating the institutional emergency plan. Syrah is interested in issues of conservation ethics and outreach within and beyond the field of conservation. With that, I'd like to turn things over to Susan to kick off today's presentation. Welcome. This is Susan. So let's get started. This talk is about assessing your institution's disaster readiness. Disaster specific assessments are an opportunity to review the conditions affecting protection and safety of people, the collections, the building, and the site. An assessment is the beginning of understanding how to address your institution's specific needs at each level of disaster management. Our goal is to familiarize you with an approach to assessment procedures as a way to discover conditions, develop priorities, and make improvements. An assessment usually results in a disaster plan used to respond to an event and a strategic plan to systematically improve conditions and overall protection. This talk doesn't include how to write these plans, but instead it's about how to ask the right questions and lead your team to make thoughtful and balanced decisions in disaster preparedness. There's a lot of good information about assessing, planning, protecting, and responding to disasters, and we've given you a number of excellent handouts and resources. We recommend the AIC website, the AIC YouTube channel videos, and Connecting to Collections Care webinars. This talk will be made available on the AIC YouTube channel. As of this side, grant funds are available for assessment projects, and there's a good digest of funding sources on the AIC website. So I'd like to thank Jess, Becca Kennedy, and the AIC staff for all of your support, and I see a lot of friends and more than a few experienced heritage responders on the webinar today. Thank you for coming. We're very pleased that you've joined us today. This is Syra. I'm going to get us started with some history. In 1966, the Arno River flooded Florence, Italy, killing 101 people and destroying and damaging millions of cultural artifacts. This was one of the hallmark events in conservation, with volunteers from all over the world called mud angels, working to save as much of the damaged material as possible. The Florence flood highlighted the need for systematic disaster planning. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina took everyone by surprise. No one was prepared, and it showed. In recent years, large-scale events like Hurricane Katrina and Sandy motivated the further development of a methodical system of disaster preparation, protection, and recovery for cultural sites and collections from all types and sizes of disasters. The system of disaster readiness in cultural institutions is constantly evolving, and our response to recent disasters shows that we have made great strides, including training many more people. In honour of the 50-year anniversary of the Florence flood, there was a joint meeting of the American Institute for Conservation, AIC, and the Canadian Association for Conservation of Cultural Property. The postprints are a really good resource. Disaster assessment, planning, protection, and response in cultural institutions is now systematically organized. In the United States, the Foundation for the American Institute for Conservation, FAIC, began by formally training and organizing over 100 responders, originally called AIC CERT, C-E-R-T, for Collections Emergency Response Team. There was confusion because in the disaster field, CERT refers to community responders, so now the group is called National Heritage Responders. NHR responders are available 24-7 to answer questions and respond to disasters. There are two groups, the FAIC Working Group, which supports Boots on the Ground Recovery, and the AIC Emergency Committee, which focuses on education. This talk is sponsored by the Emergency Committee. As you begin thinking about disaster assessment, external heritage protection groups which provide local, regional, statewide, national, and international disaster planning and response. Along with the National Heritage Responders, there are groups like the Alliance for Response, AFR, which is a national organization of regional groups. There are also local groups, for example, HERA, the Heritage Emergency Response Alliance in Atlanta, Georgia. All these heritage preservation groups provide regional training and other resources of disaster management. FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, has recently joined with the Smithsonian and the U.S. National Archives to provide training called HART, Heritage Emergency and Response Training, which was recently involved in assessing conditions and conducting training in Puerto Rico, along with NHR. Another group, the U.S. Committee of the Blue Shield, works to protect cultural heritage specifically in areas of conflict. Museum and library professional organizations, regional and state agencies also offer assistance. You should always feel comfortable reaching out to the people who work on disaster issues. We're devoted to this work and are able to provide important information and resources. City, state, and federal disaster agencies have their own plans and provide information, training, and response support as well. Some of this information is specifically directed at cultural institutions. Here in St. Paul, for instance, the Minnesota Historical Society participates in a statewide multi-agency task force with Minnesota Homeland Security. The Department of Emergency and Management also exists at the county and city level. You may also choose to work with local universities and other agencies. All these types of organizations can be helpful resources when considering disaster assessment, since they have their own disaster plans which can be integrated with yours. Disaster assessment is important as a first step toward building a disaster plan to protect your site, buildings, collections, and most importantly, people. The safety of people is always the highest priority. A disaster plan formally documents needs and priority actions. But even without writing a disaster plan, a disaster assessment is a great way to get to know the institution's strengths and weaknesses, its capacities, and its needs. Investigate every aspect of your institution in detail to determine how best to protect it. What's the current level of protection? How ready are you to respond now? In line with this, Jess, can you post a poll question? How many of you have a disaster plan? Wow, it looks like most people have a disaster plan. About half so far. We're giving it a couple minutes to get some more results in and then we'll continue. All right, it looks like most people do have a disaster plan that is in some form or another. I'm going to go home for everyone else. We're glad you're here. In conducting a disaster assessment, you're evaluating the level of preparedness in the institution. The more information you have before a disaster, the more successful and efficient your recovery efforts will be. So gather a diverse range of information, including your organizational mission, policy plan procedures, staff duties and capabilities, and the conditions and vulnerabilities of the site, buildings and collections. And we're going to touch on these throughout the talk. We really want to stress that assessments are an ongoing process requiring a high level collaboration between an institution's departments. You might have a specific project to do an assessment, but you will also have to periodically reassess conditions as people come and go and collections grow. If this all seems overwhelming, know that there are a range of helpful resources out there to guide you in conducting your assessment. A good place to begin is the AIC evaluation form. AIC is a great resource. There are also other assessment templates available online, whether free or for a fee. Depending on the size of your institution and the depth of your assessment, you may prefer one of these. Disaster assessment, protection and recovery should be a primary concern in every cultural institution. As the graphic represents, we assess every aspect of the institution, starting with the administration and progressing through the physical site and building and into the collections level. Identifying problems may not always be comfortable, but acknowledging them and sensitizing people are very important. Without question, it's better to invest time and money to protect collections before a disaster than try to recover afterwards. We will look at many aspects of disaster management throughout the talk, starting with administrative issues. A useful place to begin an assessment is by looking at the institution's mission statement, which in part defines the reason the collection exists and how it is to be used. The mission statement will provide the assessment team with a basis for identifying collections' priorities. Every museum has a unique focus and interpretation of their collections. Obviously, art museums and a natural history museum have very different needs. Are you working in a larger institution with professional staff in a large budget or a small historical society with a volunteer staff and no money? A key component in disaster readiness is the success of the institution's management of daily operations. Organizing developed institutions will likely be more successful in disaster recovery. An example of good collections management is reflected in inventories, which should itemize collections as well as building contents like furniture and equipment. Complete and appropriately detailed inventories are important for daily operations, but they are also critical to disaster preparedness and response. They provide identifying information, especially when disassociation or the loss of identifying accession numbers and tags occurs in disasters. They are necessary for tracking collections if working with disaster companies. And insurance companies will also require detailed inventories and monetary values to justify losses. Successful inventory management includes making sure information is backed up off-site in a safe location. A disaster assessment typically includes reviewing a variety of documents that are attached to a plan. We include this topic in the assessment because these informational resources are critical in disaster response and need to be assessed and updated regularly. Some of the most critical documents include a telephone call list with contact information for people available in disaster response, and building in-site plans with copies of the plan showing evacuation routes and locations of safety equipment. Other documents that may be attached to disaster plans include but are in no way limited to disaster supply lists, safety checklists, identification and permission forms for response staff and volunteers, template inventory forms which are used to identify objects, their conditions, and their changing locations as they move through recovery, insurance information, collections policies, protocols, and procedures like instructions for handling collections, and inventories. To determine which attachments may be most useful, look at other institutions' disaster plans, especially those institutions most similar to yours. There are a number of good resources including the AIC emergency pages and the websites for the American Alliance of Museums and American Library Association. Some additional resources are the AIC emergency response salvage wheel, the field guide to emergency response, and the emergency response app. The app is available as a free download for a variety of phone operating systems while the salvage wheel and the field guide are available for purchase on the AIC website. An assessment team should include input from all members of the staff including the board of directors, collection staff, security personnel, buildings and grounds crew, and the director, all of whom will have unique observations. The team may expand depending on the size of your institution. The assessment team should gather information from everyone on staff to best identify, prioritize, and address comprehensive needs for protection of the entire institution. The assessment team may include recovery specialists such as conservators, historic preservation architects, and the heritage preservation groups like NHR and AFR who can provide valuable insight, support, and training. Architects and engineers can identify building issues and develop priorities to address them. Other institutions in your area may have staff with expertise or experience, and institutions with mutual aid agreements are often more successful in recovery actions. Funders may function as assessment team members if there are a good source of information about similar institutions, programs, or available funds. Vendors can suggest improvements in collection storage and local businesses may be able to provide you with needed equipment, supplies, and or people in the event of a disaster. Most importantly, first responders should be brought in to assess conditions, identify safety issues, make recommendations, and provide training. It might be unnerving to have inspections although this review is crucial to ensure the safety of people, the building, and its contents. Their visit is also an opportunity to cross train and sensitize police and firefighters to your collection needs. There's an important point to make here. In a disaster event of any size, cultural heritage responders should only enter a disaster site after first responders have declared the seed to be safe. Developing a relationship with local fire and police departments can only be beneficial. Disaster response companies are another part of the team. They provide equipment, supplies, and different kinds of services. Services include providing drying equipment, cleaning, buildings, and contents, and for collections, packing, moving, storing, freeze drying, and mold removal, duplication, and archiving. In a pre-disaster assessment, it is important to determine if local or national companies can meet your institution's needs and standards. A contract written in advance of a disaster can define jobs, their expected outcomes, and include costs, scheduling, expectations of staff training, site security, detail of inventories, and quality control. Each disaster company or franchise may offer varying types and qualities of services. A number of companies have experience in working with cultural institutions. You can investigate vendors by looking at their relationships to other museums and by visiting the vendors' facilities. An important component of developing good disaster readiness is in assessing individual staff and volunteers' capabilities, limitations, and quirks. How can you best assign projects and responsibilities in disaster assessment and protection or in a response action? Disaster situations are stressful and critical decisions will be made during difficult times. Stress commonly exaggerates personality traits, so it's helpful to anticipate a variety of emotional responses. Frankly, there may be individuals that you may choose to work with or possibly those you need to work around. Some people may be well-intentioned but may assert strong opinions or perhaps not understand the importance of working within museum standards. This assessment of individuals' capabilities will help identify skill sets and assign the best roles and responsibilities, especially when developing the Disaster Response Team. It's also very important to do a self-assessment, looking at your own personality. Identify how you can best contribute to the assessment team and in Disaster Response. In fact, what are your capabilities, your limitations, and your quirks? Extroverts may be more comfortable being team leaders or community liaisons while introverts may prefer focusing on hands-on recovery. So coordinating people with different personalities and abilities is done through something called the Incident Command System, or ICS, which was developed by FEMA. ICS defines roles and responsibilities within a Disaster Response Team. ICS is not necessarily an assessment topic, but it's important to understand in advance of disasters. We strongly recommend that you take the free online FEMA ICS 100 training courses. There are some key issues about ICS and cultural institutions that we want to mention. The Incident Command System needs to be flexible and adjust to the given situation. The person who is most qualified for a role should assume the functions of that role. For example, a collections manager may be best suited to supervising the disaster site and collections recovery, while a museum director's skills are better suited to taking charge of fundraising and public relations. In smaller organizations, one person may be responsible for several roles depending on the size of the team. The Incident Command System provides an important structure to sometimes chaotic disaster response. This is where it's very helpful to assess team members' strengths and assign them appropriate roles and responsibilities. Determining the training needs of staff, volunteers, and the public. For example, does everyone on the staff know how to use a fire extinguisher correctly? Do you conduct fire drills and practice evacuations that include your visitors? Determine who can assist in training, such as first responders, cultural heritage responders, and or in-house staff. Training should be done on a regular schedule and repeated often. As your staff changes, it's important to teach the new people and make sure that all staff training is current. In any disaster deployment, it is essential to have proper personal protective equipment, called PPE, for personal health and safety. If you're not healthy, you'll be unable to perform and be an integral part of a team. If someone becomes ill, their absence will disrupt smooth, salvage operations and make everyone's job that much more difficult. Without proper use of PPE, people may develop long-term health issues. In the image on the left, you see the things that are essential personal protective equipment. Your institution may have legal liabilities related to PPE, but this is a complicated topic which must be addressed by your administration. Information on health and safety can be found on the Occupational Safety and Health Administration OSHA website and the AIC Health and Safety Wiki. Along with standard PPE, each responder should equip themselves with a personal go kit. This is usually a backpack filled with basic supplies, which not only includes your PPE, but additional personal items such as medications, food and water. The contents of the kits may be influenced by the specific needs of your institutional situation. For example, those in flood prone areas which may develop contaminated water may want to include water filtration straws in their kits. Part of an assessment process is ensuring disaster response supplies and equipment are either on hand or readily accessible. Having a cache of supplies available saves time, so they won't have to be gathered during an event. Access to stores and their supplies may be limited, especially in large-scale events, so it's important to keep supplies set aside for disasters of all times. A master supply list is available on the AIC Emergency website and is one of the disaster plan attachments Susan talked about earlier. It's helpful to think of assessment as a series of observations, starting with the broad and proceeding through more specific physical or conceptual issues from the site and building into the collection or object level. Conducting assessments is a group effort. People see different things and it's difficult for one person to see everything. Including staff from different departments will ensure that every area of the institution is represented. It's helpful for everyone to observe problems firsthand and also to contribute information and guidance from their area of specialty. Hopefully, undertaking an assessment will encourage team building and will educate and sensitize staff to issues outside of their expertise and daily responsibilities. Cross-communication is crucial. Identify issues specific to your geography that are unique to every site. These features are important to identify since they may present hazards or hinder disaster response. For example, is your institution in a floodplain, a mountainous area with winding narrow roads, or in a busy city? Northwestern United States is more prone to floods. California has earthquakes. There are volcanoes in Hawaii and hurricanes in the southern United States. Each situation will require somewhat different planning and effect response. A more specific example seen in this slide is the Minnesota Historical Society, which is located at the intersection of two very heavily traveled interstate highways. In the event of a disaster, access to the historical society may be limited by stalled traffic. Those unfamiliar with complex highways may become lost, or an overturned truck nearby may create a hazmat, a hazardous materials situation. Assessments involve being ever vigilant for changing conditions and unexpected situations. Determine existing local hazards. Are you next to an oil refinery, a nuclear power plant, or some other potential threat? Next, monitor changing conditions such as weather. The goal is to identify all hazards knowing it's impossible to predict every eventuality. For example, the 2008 Republican National Convention was scheduled close to the Minnesota History Center. We could identify a potential hazard in the crowds of people that were coming, but we could not predict if there would be civil unrest, vandalism, or tear gas being pulled into the HVAC system. Assessment includes evaluating communication systems and their potential for failure. Cell towers, for example, may not function in large-scale disasters, or your phone system may be electricity dependent. GPS may fail, so paper maps may become necessary. In the case of a large complex disaster in a building, a network of staff with backup systems of communication will be essential. A building can be the first line of protection in a disaster, but it can also be a source of the disaster. So it's important to assess each building to identify vulnerabilities and issues. Once these are identified, projects can be designed to secure and protect the building, its systems, and its contents. As you do an assessment, think about the building envelope, fabric, and configuration, infrastructure, and the structural materials comprising the building. Where are the building's weaknesses? The building and grounds crew, architects, and engineers will be really helpful here. And this type of in-depth analysis of your building can be funded by grants. When assessing a building, it is particularly important to be concerned about human safety. We really want to repeatedly stress that keeping people safe is always the top priority in any disaster response situation. Buildings are multifaceted and have many aspects and variables in location, access, construction materials, age, and state of repair, which can constitute either protective measures or hazards depending on quality and conditions. The building structure and the building fabric will be specific to every institution and so will its inherent issues. Frank Gehry is known for using experimental material as opposed to a traditional log cabin. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. Inspect a building from the outside in. Consider the condition of the building, the frequency and quality of maintenance, and whether certain items need to be repaired or replaced. Assess the infrastructure inside the building. Consider the age, condition, and maintenance of various systems such as plumbing, electricity, gas lines, and city services. In doing this, work with building engineers, facilities, and custodial staff. In assessing the various building systems, locate the shutoff for gas, electricity, and water. Decide ahead of time whose job that will be and know the safety protocols. You might not catch all potential problems, but the more situations are identified, the better. A thorough examination and documentation of conditions and issues concerning the building construction and vulnerabilities will identify problems and should lead to priority repairs and improvements. For example, water infiltration and drainage is a common problem. When you examine your building exterior, look for clues to what might be happening inside. All the images on this slide show ways of determining whether water may be infiltrating your building. The image on the left show the preservation specialist assessing whether building is damp to the touch, while the center image shows mold below a downspout. The image on the right show the confluence of site and building problems that could result in water seepage indoors. Doors, windows, and skylights are all potential sites for water infiltration. Changes in weather can cause water to condense on windows and skylights in particular. Keep an eye out for pest infiltration. Pests aren't just a disaster in themselves, but can also indicate that the building envelope has issues. As we suggested in the previous slide, exterior problems can create interior problems. Stains or mold on walls and ceilings are both signs of water intrusion. Consult with qualified building specialists regarding the pros and cons of ceiling foundations and the exterior of basement walls, especially in historic buildings. Do not seal interior walls unless you want a vapor barrier. Every building interior will be unique in its structure, interpretation, and use. Building layouts, space allocation, exhibit design, evacuation routes, safety equipment, and visitor flow, including population identity and density, all need to be assessed. And decisions need to be made relying on the expertise of staff and consultants. It's important to evaluate the building's space allocations and proximities to potential hazards. In other words, is the space being used to maximum efficiency and safety? Risks include collections stored near or under sources of water, pipes, mechanical rooms, bathrooms, kitchens, janitor's closets with sinks, and workshops. Collections are also at risk when stored with or near hazardous materials such as solvents or gas. Collections located close to exterior doors risk exposure to water or pest infiltration. On the other hand, collections near exterior doors are more accessible for evacuation. Sometimes space allocation assignments were made in the past and can't be changed. Addressing competing issues and the needs identified during the assessment may be a balancing act and becomes part of disaster protection and preservation planning. Wayfinding within a building, especially a dark one, requires thought and preparation. Evaluate routes and pathways for the safe evacuation of both collections and people. Mark evacuation routes clearly on posted floor plans. Halls and corridors should be kept clear. Look for hindrances such as low hanging pipes, ducts, or electrical chases. Lighted exit signs and emergency lighting with backup power are public building code requirements in most areas. Are keys necessary to open exit doors? Will doors with electronic key card access function when power is out or when the backup generator as a power source? Ensure that staff training is repeated regularly so that staff and visitors can be moved safely through the building. A good question to ask is, will someone unfamiliar with a building such as visitors be able to find their way out in the event of a blackout? Locating additional work and storage space is another important part of assessment. In small scale disasters, you may be able to use alternate spaces within the building, but large scale emergencies may necessitate using offsite spaces. Consider nearby buildings, rental storage units, school gymnasiums, and freestanding storage pods. Keep in mind that transporting collections requires trucks, drivers, and insurance coverage. Transporting collections may introduce additional risks as well. Moving collections through bad weather or moving damaged collections may further compromise their condition. Heating, ventilating, and air conditioning systems HVAC or HVAC are another focus of assessment because those in good condition may help prevent disasters, but those that are old or in poor repair may be a cause. For example, poorly combusted oil in an old furnace may result in a puff back covering collections in soot. In the assessment, determine the age, condition, and level of maintenance of the equipment. Simple actions like regular inspections and replacing filters that are properly sized and installed will prevent many problems. Establish if regular monitoring and maintenance is being done. It's important to work with the building engineer and or a hired HVAC company to ensure that professional standards are met. Fire suppression systems from museums and libraries are beyond many of your job descriptions or daily responsibilities. The assessment team should be familiar with how systems work, existing or potential vulnerabilities, and any needed repairs or upgrades. This is an area of assessment and disaster protection that must be done and usually by a professional. Heat and smoke detectors, fire depression systems, and freestanding fire extinguishers need to be inspected regularly or annually by a qualified professional who can certify that the systems are completely functional. Many institutions are nervous about having the fire department expose problems during an inspection since it may necessitate changes to bring the building up to code. But the point of doing this assessment is to ensure that building codes are met to protect the building, the collections, and especially people. Jess, we have another poll question. Would you put that up please? Have you had a visit or inspection from your fire department? It's encouraging that a majority of people have had a visit from the fire department. That's really great. Thank you everyone. Part of an assessment is determining the need for protective measures against potential water damage. Identify locations of liquid bearing pipes will supply and drainage, especially those over collections or running in the walls adjacent to collections. Floor drains and sewage plumbing should be checked so that they are unobstructed. Check that any freestanding dehumidifiers drain directly into a floor drain to protect against collected water or overflowing the reservoir. Raising collections off the floor and moving them away from water sources are something to strive for. More simple protective measures include preparing pre-cut sheets of plastic to drape over vulnerable shelves by using water alarms. In a large-scale disaster, a backup generator is desirable or may be needed to provide lighting and environmental control. If you have one, assess whether there is regularly scheduled maintenance and a qualified person to operate it safely. If you don't have a backup generator, determine if it's in your institution's budget to rent or buy one or if someone's available to pursue a grant to obtain it. Some of you may be managing building climates without the benefit of electricity or generators as is happening in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands right now. Without mechanical backup systems, a viable alternative can be a passive environmental control system. Knowledgeable professionals who can identify in your pre-assessment, pre-disaster assessment can help you with this. As we continue the assessment, we will look at the conditions of storage and collections. A well-managed institution with good collections maintenance will be more successful in responding to a disaster and mitigating its effects. At the collections level, review storage locations for security and accessibility and, of course, the most stable climate control. Determine if storage furniture is optimally configured and if the storage furniture is adequately sized and physically stable. Determine if collections housing provides sufficient support and protection. And finally, look at collections conditions since fragile conditions are likely to be even more vulnerable in event of a disaster. An assessment should also review how well storage rooms and collections are identified, look at whether location codes are assigned to every room, shelving bank, shelf, and drawer. Lists should be made to identify the contents of every shelf, cabinet, drawer, and box, and these shelf lists are useful to identify priority items in evacuation. Color-coded labels and reflector strips can be used to mark important collections and can be especially helpful for salvage by first responders who don't know your priority items. Each type of storage unit and the material it's made from will have distinct advantages and disadvantages for protecting your collections. On the left of your image, collections were protected from fire by metal flat files, but on the right the collections were severely damaged by water accumulating in the drawers. We can't give you ideal choices for furniture here, it will depend on your type of collections, financial situation, and identified vulnerabilities and needs specific to your cultural collection. Some important parameters to review in storage design include determining that aisles are wide enough for carts and free from obstacles. The fire department can help with compliance to codes and good judgment will help determine if collections can be safely maneuvered. Make sure that equipment such as ladders, carts, and dollies are available. Collections should be kept well off the ground, but some choices will need to be made. Is it better to have furniture on wheels to remove them quickly in case of a water disaster on the left? Or is it better to have furniture bolted to walls and floors for earthquake protection? Good quality housing materials provide physical and chemical support and can act as an added level of protection. If there's a leak, boxes will absorb some water before it affects the object inside. Storage housing can also be designed to make collection evacuation quick, easy, and efficient. The moccasins shown in the slide can be easily picked up using the handle built into the sporting enclosure. Given the scope of most collections, implementing improved housing is an ongoing endeavor. Identifying projects to rehouse collections as part of disaster preparedness might allow you to access additional sources of grant funding. Different types of housing materials like paperboard, plastic, metal, and wood will react differently to disaster conditions and should be chosen to provide the best protection as budget allows. For example, metal-edged archival boxes that are more expensive may protect against the contents being crushed when the boxes are wet. Many institutions experience a disaster while items are on exhibit. So disaster assessments should include reviewing exhibition areas, cases, and mounts. Are collections secure and well-supported while on exhibit? Are they positioned so that visitors can be easily evacuated? How easy will it be to evacuate the collections themselves? In undertaking an assessment, some of the most difficult decisions will be about choosing priority collection items. Decisions about priorities should be based first on the institutional mission, but they are often biased by staff preferences or sentimental attachment to particular objects. Criteria to balance include curatorial value, financial value, media sensitivity, the quantity of materials, and the replaceability of materials. For example, a single item rare book can be identified as a priority while current publications or duplicate materials are not. Balancing the criteria in determining priority collections requires a lot of clear communication and hopefully consensus among the staff. It's better to make choices about priority collections for salvage before rather than after a disaster. Hazardous collections require a special mention. These collections present numerous and varied safety and health issues. Natural history specimens often contain arsenic and heavy metals which are released by water from floods or broken open in earthquakes. Guns and ammunition can also release heavy metals like lead and some remain live like ammunition. Protecting hazardous materials should be considered a high priority when determining collections needs. As we said before, this graphic is how we conceptualize the sequence of assessment. However, no two disasters are the same in type, scale, and resulting damage. Another phase of assessment is always needed when an event occurs. Hopefully, this will be made easier by your preliminary preparations. For example, you have established priorities, conducted staff training, and maintained a cache of supplies. You will have to adjust the disaster plan to meet the needs of the actual situation. In a disaster, there's many things happening all at once, especially in a large-scale disaster. And this is the time where pre-disaster assessments and planning will provide the framework for an efficient and successful salvage and recovery. The first step in a response will be to access the disaster plan. Computer copies of a plan may not be available, either because you can't get to your office or because there's no electricity. We recommend paper copies be kept in cars, homes, or other places that are easy to access. Next, you will need to assemble your team using the disaster plans contact call list. Determine if primary people from your list are available for staffing the response team. People with specified roles may be unavailable, difficult to find, or unable to get to the site. So you will need backup people who should have been identified in your initial assessment. Sometimes help comes from unexpected volunteers, and everyone will have some way to help. Please remember, safety first. The initial assessment should have identified responsibilities and relevant safety documents to attach to the disaster plan. These might include safety checklists, identification and permission forms for response staff and volunteers. We've given you a handout titled reentry checklist, which will guide the team in the safety protocols for entering a disaster site. In a disaster, a reassessment is necessary to establish the type, quantity, extent of damage, and the accessibility of affected collections. The assessment team should refer to the disaster plan for predetermining collections priorities, but will need to adjust to approach the salvage based on the situation at the time. Once the collections reassessment establishes the needs and priorities, it's really important at this point to stop, sit down, and plan the methods, strategies, and resources needed to implement salvage. That is, the people, equipment, supplies, and spaces. Packout is the sorting, packaging, and removal of damaged collections to a work area, storage, or to a vendor. You will have to determine the needed and available people, supplies, equipment, and working space, and this will be challenging when dealing with large scale events. Your pre-disaster or initial assessment will have planned for where to get additional supplies, equipment, or space, and who will procure them. Pre-disaster assessment is all about anticipating and balancing the needs of disaster preparedness and response. It's also about predicting the long-term needs of recovery. And recovery can be a long process. After a disaster, institutions need to maintain their daily operations, but will also have the added burden of rehabilitation. Additional staff time will be needed to treat, repair, deaccession, or replace items to rebuild collections. Damaged collections may require isolated storage, designated work space, and regular reassessment of conditions over time. An important example of this is isolating and monitoring multi-contaminated collections to ensure there is no additional outbreak, even after treatment. A disaster of any size is likely to alter existing strategic management plans and divert implementation of other projects. And the need for additional funds is inevitable. Thorough, pre- and post-disaster assessments will help you develop strategic planning and actions that are both practical and realistic for your institution. Finally, after disaster response is over, the disaster team should debrief, assess the success of preparations, response, and recovery. What worked well? What do you wish had been done differently? This discussion will help you update the disaster plan, strengthen the team, and prepare for another emergency situation. This is the final stage in the cycle of assessments. Assessment requires focus, time, and energy. It's a real opportunity to strengthen your institution. We've seen the aftermath of many disasters, so we're passionate about this subject. Institutions prepared in advance recover more efficiently and successfully. We thank you for joining us in taking this first step towards disaster preparedness. We encourage you to pursue your assessment and planning. The bibliography and handouts provide many resources on each of the topics we've covered today. Thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you so much for joining us, and we're so happy to take questions. Wonderful. Well, thank you all so much. We had a few comments and questions come in, mostly technical in nature, so a couple people had questions about some of the links and resources. So just to share with you all, we will triple and quadruple check those links and make sure they're all working as they're supposed to and have them included in the YouTube reporting that we will post tomorrow and then share that with you all via email. We've registered this formally. We had a comment come in from another member of the National Heritage Responders who noted that loans are always a top priority when you're considering your collections priorities. Susan jumped in and agreed with that. So let's see. I'm seeing a few more comments come in. Mostly thank yous. If anyone has specific questions related to the content that we heard from Susan and Bob and Ira, please do feel free to go ahead and put those in there. Well, I think you all did a wonderful job covering things. It seems that there aren't too many lingering questions. So thank you to our fantastic presenters. Again, if anyone does have other lingering questions that come up after you've had some time to process today's presentation, please don't hesitate to get in touch. I believe you all have received my email via the webinar system, but I'll go ahead and type it in the chat window here now so you all have it. Again, I want to give a big thank you to those members of the Emergency Committee who helped organize today's session. And I also would like to share with you all before you leave just a quick survey link so that you can share your thoughts on this program. In particular, note at the end if there's anything that you would like to see covered in a related sphere. This is a program that we'd like to try and run again in another webinar within the Emergency Committee. So please do share any thoughts about how to continue to build on this series. And likewise, I would like to remind you all that if you have undertaken any activities this month of May to help boost your institutional emergency preparedness, and this webinar counts, attending this webinar today, as one such activity, please do go ahead and share those with us to be officially entered into our May Day drawing. So we have had prizes donated, delivered archival for any institutions who share their emergency preparedness activities as a part of the May Day campaign. So please do share that information and you'll be entered to win one of six prizes and that drawing will be held on June 1st. So again, thank you all. Anything else, Bob, Syrah, Susan? Thanks for joining us. Looks like an official hello to my friends from Greece and Puerto Rico. I see we have people from all over the world. Thanks for joining us. Oh, great. Yes, and I do see a question come in. Thank you for flagging that. So Caroline asked, you mentioned grant funding for backup generators. Is there a specific grant that you recommend for that kind of purchase? No, I don't have a specific one. There are state grants available, I know in Minnesota, for example, but I think that also some of the federal grants will cover that as part of a larger project. Usually grants don't cover just purchase of equipment, but equipment necessary to do a project. Any other thoughts, Susan or Syrah? Well, I could just say that's a complicated issue and everyone will have to research it separately. As we said, there's a great source of grants listed on the AIC website and emergency grants have been made available in the times of crisis. So part of it is diligence on your part to keep up with available grant agencies. Well, I'm not seeing any new questions coming in. So again, thank you to our wonderful presenters, Susan and Bob and Syrah. Fantastic presentation. Thank you to all of you for showing up today to take part in this program. We had over 150 participants, which is fantastic. And I look forward to being in touch with you all soon with a copy of the recording of today's session. Thanks again. Thank you so much. Thank you all. Thanks a lot, folks.