Compact shelving and disasters

This query has come up once or twice in the DistList, but no
responses have been posted. Does anyone have any experience with the
behaviour of compact shelving during floods, fires, or earthquakes?
I'm especially interested in how people have handled the problem of
getting access to the materials when the shelving fails to open
either because of increased weight or distortion of the tracks (this
happened to us during last winter's flood).

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                  Conservation DistList Instance 12:48
                 Distributed: Monday, November 30, 1998
                       Message Id: cdl-12-48-015
                                  ***