Disaster Plan by MayDay 2010 Step 2

Posted by Alix on 25 January, 2010 in Librarians, Preservation, disaster

LYRASIS Preservation Services will be publishing easy steps that you can take to complete your Disaster Plan. A new step will be presented every 2 weeks. If you follow each step you will have a Disaster Plan by MayDay 2010. To review previous steps simply search mayday.

Step 2 Assessment
You began gathering existing information and organizing your planning committee in Step 1. You also started to address the goals for your disaster plan.

Step 2 is assessment of risks.

There are different kinds of risks. We will start with nature. Think of the weather patterns where you are and what sort of severe conditions are probable for your area. Are you in Tornado Alley or a hurricane prone coastal area? Do you live in an area that has experienced wild fires? Also, think of the surrounding topography and its impact on your institution. What risks do you face being near a river or a mountain? Remember - what has happened in the past is likely to happen in the future.

Other risks are manmade. Are you near an airport, rail lines, or major thoroughfare? Could you be impacted by a transportation accident? Are you near an industrial area where there are potentially hazardous chemicals? Information on risks in your region may have already been compiled. You should contact the risk managers for your parent organization and regional emergency management of your city or county. They may be the same people who have the area’s disaster response plans.

The goal of the assessment process is to help you focus on your surroundings and your readiness to respond to emergencies.

An assessment needs to be done of your facility as well. You need to think of the physical structure and functions of your building and the inherent risks therein. An assessment may uncover situations that can be easily remedied, but require a regular maintenance schedule such as easily clogged drains or gutters. It may also alert you to potential problems: an aging water heater or cracked flooring. Other conditions may be highlighted that need to be addressed in the disaster plan, for example, having no fire suppression system.

It is important to get input from your facilities manager or staff. Ask them what concerns they have about the building. They may have very current assessments and maintenance schedules for the building and systems. It’s likely they will share. If your cultural collection is housed in a multifunction building, talk to the other tenants as well. You have a shared interest.

Get other staff involved. Engage the cleaning personnel in a discussion of what they see when they clean. Have they noticed consistent troubled spots? Encourage the staff to look critically at the space they move through every day. Use this as an opportunity to take a different path from the front door to staff room or the public service desk to the photocopier. This will get people thinking and test your lines of communication as well.

Risk assessments can take many forms. Check with your parent and associated organizations; they may have an assessment tools and procedures in place that you could use. One assessment tool you may find useful is the LYRASIS Preservation Services Leaflet entitled Disaster Prevention and Protection Checklist located here: http://www.lyrasis.org/Preservation/Disaster-Resources/~/media/Files/LYRASIS/Preservation%20Files/disasterprevention.ashx

This easy to use assessment form addresses the building and the surrounding areas as well as the collections areas.

As much as we would like to plan for every possible contingency – the goal of risk assessment to decide what is most likely to be a problem in the future.

Assessments may take longer than the two weeks we are suggesting, but start today and be on your way to a Disaster Plan by MayDay 2010.

Step 3 will be presented February 8, 2010.

LYRASIS Preservation Services are funded in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Division of Preservation and Access.