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Lessons from Hurricane Katrina

Having crossed from the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico via South Florida, hurricane Katrina, packing 140 MPH winds, made landfall in Plaquemines Parish in Southern Louisiana on Monday 29 August 2005 (6:10 AM CDT) as a strong Category 4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale. Four hours later (10:00 AM CDT), the hurricane, downgraded to a Category 3, touched land again near the Louisiana-Mississippi border sustaining diminished winds of 125 MPH. A storm surge, generated by the strong right side of the hurricane, was forced ashore as it met the shallow slope of Mississippi’s continental shelf. This storm surge, exceeding 25 feet, swept inland up to six miles.

The U.S. National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) ranks Katrina “one of the strongest storms to impact the coast of the United States during the last 100 years,” with a barometric pressure dropping to 27.11 inches. Further, a preliminary report from NOAA summarizes Hurricane Katrina as “the most costly natural disaster to strike the United States ever and the deadliest since the Lake Okeechobee disaster (hurricane) of September, 1928 . . . As of September 26, the death toll stood at 1,075 and damage estimates were in excess of $100 billion.”

Televised images depicted communities in ruin, refugees homeless, and a stunned population wading waste-deep in flood waters in sodden New Orleans. In the wake of the storm, communication concerning the state of heritage collections was fragmentary. With little factual information to go on, the American Association for State and Local History (AASLH) initiated a plan to organize two mobile units to assess conditions in the collecting institutions of Louisiana and Mississippi. The Heritage Emergency Assistance Recovery Teams (HEART) assessment program was funded by the generous support of the Watson-Brown Foundation of Thomson of Georgia and the History Channel. Each team was led by a museum professional and staffed with conservator volunteers from the American Institute for Conservation (AIC), with four one-week rotations planned per state.

HEART MS#1

The first Mississippi HEART assessment team was comprised of Joy Barnett (Administrative Assistant, Texas Association of Museums), her son Ashley Barnett (Fire and Rescue, Burnet, TX), Gary Frost (Library Conservator, University of Iowa), and Randy Silverman (Preservation Librarian, University of Utah). Arriving in Jackson, Mississippi, we were greeted by unseasonably hot and muggy weather. Our home from 22-29 September was a small, rented recreational vehicle (RV) stocked with food, water, and bedding. A car was also rented to increase the team’s mobility. Joy was the team dispatcher and team manager. Ashley was our ever ready RV driver, general blockade runner and campsite finder. The Mississippi gulf coast highways and city streets were devastated and all signage had been swept away. Without the skills of Joy and Ashley the MS#1 assessment project would have been a disaster as well.

Our team included two conservators, Randy Silverman from the University of Utah and myself. It was our job to assess the damage to collections and to help specify needs for salvage and recovery. We assessed thirteen library and archive collecting institutions. Eight survived damaged, three survived with major damage and loss and two no longer exist. We could not find the remains of the library at Pass Christian and at another location we found the remains of the library, but could find no evidence of surviving collections. The artifact collections of the Maritime and Seafood Industry Museum at Biloxi were spread across acres of debris. In many situations we were scouting for collections in the ruins of entire cities.

But the memorable experience was not that of devastation. How many of us have a context for appreciating cities in ruin? For me, at least the devastation didn’t really register. What was memorable was the resilience and tenacity of the Mississippians. Dedicated librarians, archivists and museum workers continued a daily struggle to secure and revive their institutions. At the devastated Jefferson Davis Library we were greeted with a “Welcome to the 19th century!”. This was not exaggeration. These Mississippians were living in tents and cars and eating army rations. Three weeks after the storm they continued to live and work without electricity, water, or any municipal utilities and many were faced with months, even years, of continuing salvage work.

It was obvious that our concern with the survival of cultural collections had to find integration into much larger needs of the region. Actually, that was the first realization; that this was a wide regional disaster covering four states and an area larger than the United Kingdom. Surviving collections would need preservation in the ambient heat and humidity or would need evacuation inland. Emergency funding would be needed to sustain institutions in the face of collapse of the local economies.

The Army provided diesel generated electricity to ventilate surviving collections and commercial salvage operations were at work evacuating collections to drying facilities around the country. Rare and important materials were relocated to surviving inland institutions and library services were migrated to inland branches. Our team appraised the situation at each visited institution and advised on next steps and corrective actions. We also submitted four National Endowment for the Humanities “Emergency Response” grants ($30,000 each) and walked these through by cell phone. These crucial, open budget, funds were made available within 5 working days in an admirable demonstration of agility in the large NEH agency.

A full report of our activities has been published by the IFLA International Preservation News. “Disaster Recovery in the Artifact Fields – Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina” by Gary Frost and Randy Silverman. This report can be read on-line or printed out by visiting http://www.ifla.org/VI/4/ipn.html and going to issue #37, December, 2005.

Four Lessons

Let’s continue the discussion with issues concerning national response to region wide disasters. The disaster is not over; recovery from Katrina and Rita will take decades and the potential for future natural disaster continues.

Region wide disasters dislocate populations and destroy the local capacity to recover. Institutional disaster plans become inoperative and the salvage of cultural collections is forestalled. Resources that can be brought to bear for rescue of cultural collections may be those beyond the region and these must be mobile and mobilized before the disaster strikes.

There are at least four lessons apparent from experience of the response to Katrina.

(1) Improved Response – quick action saves collections

We should continue to up-date best practices and first responder training and rehearsed menu of field services, especially mold suppression methods. Efficient mobility and mobilization of a large community of responders and rotation of field crews from practitioner volunteers and training program students are needed with utilization of job-site trailers and travel homes. The need for further training was illustrated by well intended, but problematic activities of local first responders. Industrial materials such as Tyvek, polyethylene and plywood are more readily accessible following a regional disaster. However, these materials are problematic as applied to collection salvage. Drying areas prepared with plastic sheets and poly bags used as item protectors, nurture mold growth. Archival enclosures of plastic films or Tyvek can also nurture mold. Plywood screwed to windows is frequently left in place long after the hurricane, inhibiting ventilation and illumination (without electrical service) of interiors. Historical storm shutters are superior to plywood board-ups since they can be quickly opened again. Another illustration of mis-directed activity occurs when the "germ theory" is inappropriately applied to the propagation of mold. There is an inclination to segregate, disregard and discard molded materials in an attempt to keep them from “contaminating” material without mold. The result is particularly adverse when materials with mold are quarantined under polyethylene. Ventilation and out-door air exchange applied to whole collections, regardless of ambient relative humidity, is better advised.

(2) Coordinated Dispatching – live advisory directs activities

Disasters should activate of directorates or agency emergency groups for compiled assessment and report by cell phone communications providing real time movements and schedules. In-field dispatchers must also move into action to guide on-site visits and navigation and manage distributed rest and work sessions. Assessment teams can be followed by on-site teams with job-site capacity. Overall coordination with commercial salvage services is needed.

A lesson learned is that assessment and follow-up teams should not be composed solely of preservation workers. Although the objective is recovery of collections, the teams must have members responsible for logistics, communication and navigation. Such divisions also better distribute periods of rest and work, increasing the endurance of the team overall.

(3) Distributed Recovery – most help may be outside the region

The disaster can activate out-of-region treatment projects and provide coordination with local volunteers at work sites beyond the devastated region Distributed preservation activities should encourage long term response planning including institution-to-institution connection with open exposition of lessons learned.

Commercial processes of freeze drying and sterilization are applied to collections salvage. However the needed processes of document cleaning and mending are not commercialized and are much less available. Compensation of this situation can be provided by distribution of some document cleaning and mending to preservation departments outside the region.

An example of an out-of-region response is the Project CALM (Conservation Assistance for Libraries of Mississippi) sponsored by the University of Iowa Libraries. This project, to assist restoration of historical documents damaged by hurricane Katrina, will be accomplished by volunteers from the Iowa City and Cedar Rapids areas. The three year effort will provide cost free conservation treatment and archival enclosures.

(4) Accessible Funding – cash first, before recovery

The disaster should activate emergency funding programs. The admirable example of quick relief funding by the NEH should be considered by other funding agencies. Application and corroboration of need can be provided by objective, visiting assessors. There is no long term recovery without short term survival. The four NEH Emergency Response grants implemented by the HEART MS#1 team provided a huge encouragement and crucial early support to the besieged institutions.

The rejuvenation of cultural life is particularly important in regions like the Gulf Coast with their economic dependence on tourism including the growing sector of cultural tourism. The salvage of cultural collections is a tangible step toward rejuvenation of cultural life. This step can be taken early and at lower cost than reconstruction of municipal infrastructure and utilities. Project funding to support exhibitions interpreting the impact of the disaster are also well directed to the local cultural institutions.

In the longer term, cultural institutions must position themselves in the context of investment for municipal recovery. Disaster presents opportunity, but advocates for cultural institutions will find themselves between developers intent on the most profitable tourist and hospitality economies and residents longing for restoration without change. Continuing Effort

Momentum for recovery of culture and historical collections following Gulf Coast hurricanes was well appreciated by the thirty officers of funding agencies and preservation programs who met at the Library of Congress, April 21, 2006. The symposium, titled, “Future Directions in Safe Guarding Documents Collections”, was sponsored by the Preservation Directorate of the Library of Congress, the Federal Library and Information Center Committee, and the American Folklife Center. Randy Silverman from our MS#1 team composed a working white paper for this symposium; “Towards a National Disaster Response Protocol”. This excellent proposal will be published in Libraries and the Cultural Record, University of Texas. Watch for it!

Katrina’s aftermath underscores the national need for a robust emergency response plan to deal with the salvage of cultural materials. Reviewing our experiences, we began envisioning mobile job-site trailers outfitted with collection stabilizing gear already on board. Such units could operate for days at a given location providing local outreach and assistance to private as well as institutional collections. Private family collections represent a large portion of the patrimony of the South and this sector is, so far, underserved in recovery activities.

We recognized the need for standing agreements with funding agencies to support emergency recovery efforts. Cooperative relations between relevant national organizations (e.g., AASLH, AIC) could standardize the training and selection criteria for potential volunteers – conservators, museum professionals, life-safety personnel, and students enrolled in conservation training programs – to ensure teams are ready to roll into action with the first responders. Relevant national associations (e.g., American Association of Museums, American Library Association, Society of American Archivists) could take on supporting roles such as maintaining lists of members and non-members within each state to expedite the process of determining which institutions need condition assessment. Several appropriate contacts per institution should be listed, including home and cell phone numbers. Such organizations could coordinate onsite hosting of mobile conservation units, providing clearance to use vacant institutional parking lots.

With 2005 on record as the most active hurricane season in recorded history, NOAA predicts we are now entering a 20-30 year cycle of increased tropical storm activity. In combination with other types of natural and manmade disasters, this warning should provide ample incentive to begin formulating national and international response plans to harness the good will of knowledgeable practitioners to ensure irreplaceable cultural collections are not needlessly lost. As Randy points out; “Disasters trump everything.” Collections, whether carefully conserved or not, can be quickly lost to disaster.

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