Disaster planning and large objects

Does anyone have experience with disaster planning for very large
museum objects? We are in the process of preparing disaster plans
for a number of organisations in Adelaide, a few of which have a lot
of very large collection items (e.g. cars, trucks, ship figureheads,
boats etc) that would be very difficult to move either before or
after a disaster. This would seem to limit our recovery options if a
major disaster ever occurred, so consequently we're looking extra
hard at preventive measures.

One aspect of this is fire protection--some buildings do not have
sprinkler systems (historic buildings, storage sheds etc) so we are
looking at working out a plan with the fire service in case a fire
actually happens. For example, in the event of a fire, a message can
be programmed to come up on the computer system at the fire
department saying cultural heritage is contained in the building and
directing them to further (brief) instructions on site--these
instructions will ask the firefighters to save particular areas if
possible (e.g. a particular wall where high priority items are
located) and directing them to a supply of heavy wool/cotton
blankets or fire blankets in case these can be thrown over items to
prevent some damage. (We are even thinking of making fire retardant
bags to put over relatively smaller things like the figureheads). We
are envisaging that in some cases a lot of salvage work may have to
happen on site, as it may be safer not to try and move things around
too much.

I would be very interested to hear of experiences/thoughts/plans
others may have had in working out the logistics of how to protect
and salvage these type of items in disaster situations (ie special
preventive measures and/or organising the recovery). For example,
did you/would you keep things on site? What were the most difficult
issues to deal with? With permission, I'll post a summary of
responses on the DistList.

Alice Cannon
Preventive Conservator
Artlab Australia
+61 8 8207 7520
Fax: +61 8 8207 7529


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 15:54
                 Distributed: Tuesday, February 5, 2002
                       Message Id: cdl-15-54-041
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