Comprehensive Guide to Emergency and Disaster Preparedness and Recovery
Contents:
Mold growth is an additional danger, developing within 24—48 hours if the relative humidity and temperature is high and the materials remain wet or damp. Fire damage can be caused by a variety of scenarios, including fire in an adjacent building, sparks from renovation work, faulty electrical wiring, and arson. Collections may not survive fire damage at all. If they do, they may be charred, be covered with soot, be brittle from exposure to high heat, smell of smoke, or be wet from sprinkler or hose activity, which may result in mold. Overall, facilities improvements, increased vigilance, and changes in procedure can all prevent or lessen damage to collections in a water or fire emergency.
Be aware that both short- and long-term solutions to the identified problems may be needed.
DEFINITIONS AND TERMINOLOGY
For example, collections may need to be relocated or covered with plastic sheeting until money is available for roof repair, or multiple daily checks of the building may be needed until a fire detection system that is monitored 24 hours a day can be installed. Remember to prioritize prevention activities so that the planning committee does not become overwhelmed. The committee may choose to address risks that are most likely to cause serious damage first, or they may choose to address those risks that can be mitigated without investing a great deal of time or expense—or some combination of both.
To keep track of progress over time, it is a good idea to prepare a timeline for the activities that need to be undertaken to mitigate risks. Risk management may prevent emergency situations, or at least lessen the impact of an incident, but knowing what to do when an emergency does occur is also important. Consider how your institution would respond during an actual emergency.
Would staff know what to do? Would necessary information and supplies be available? A calm, quick, and reasoned response to an emergency can make the difference between a minor incident and a disaster. Preparedness focuses on pulling together information, procedures, and resources that may be needed in an emergency. Several categories of preparedness will be addressed here: If the fire alarm goes off in the building, or a staff member receives a bomb threat, do all staff members know who to call, how to respond, and how to evacuate the building if needed?
Advance preparation of emergency procedures, wide distribution of these procedures, and staff training in implementing them are crucial to emergency preparedness. At a minimum, every cultural institution should prepare building evacuation procedures, basic water damage procedures, and an emergency call list. Emergency procedures can be prepared for many possible scenarios, including various natural disasters, mold outbreak, terrorist attack, power outage, gas or oil leak, and so on. If the institution is subject to emergencies that have advance warning such as hurricanes, some types of flooding, and wildfires , it will be helpful to prepare a list of actions to take once a warning is received.
In general, prepare response procedures for those hazards that were identified as the most serious during the risk assessment. Ongoing communication with emergency responders can pay dividends during an emergency. If first responders are familiar with the institution and its collections, they can be very helpful in saving collections and preventing further damage. Contact your local first responders and explain to them who you are, what you do, and why your institution is important to the community. Also find out how they work and how you can better work with them in the event of an emergency.
A number of basic supplies should be kept on hand for immediate response to minor water emergencies. During the planning process, gather information about services and supplies, including their cost.
Be sure to provide telephone numbers and after-hours contact information for all services and sources of supplies, and to keep this information up to date. Remember to include crucial information e. Arrange ahead of time for temporary storage space in case relocation of collections is needed, as well as for secure space that could be used for air-drying wet collections. Also, build a relationship with a commercial recovery vendor that specializes in cultural heritage materials.
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Many of these companies will conduct a free walkthrough of your site to assist in risk management and to become familiar with your space and collections. Making this contact ahead of time will allow an institution move forward more quickly with outsourcing when an incident is too big to handle in-house. Knowing how many staff members are available, what skills those staff members have in emergency response and recovery, what drying and freezing space is available, what funds are available, and whether the collections affected are priorities for salvage will all play into deciding if any incident can be handled in-house or if outside vendors are needed.
Insurance is a complex subject, but it is an important aspect of preparedness.
Institutions should have their collections adequately insured, and they must know how to file a claim and what procedures are required in the event of collections damage e. There are several types of insurance: Self-insurance refers to the practice of putting funds aside within the institution to be used in case of loss.
Some larger institutions or those that are part of a larger entity e. Commercial insurance is more common for smaller institutions that do not have the resources to allow for self-insurance. Different collection materials may need different types of insurance coverage. In libraries, special collections are often covered by a Valuable Papers and Records policy that is separate from the policy for general collections. Do not neglect insurance for the building and for equipment e. Sometimes a separate computer rider is needed to cover replacement of computer hardware and software.
Also, consider purchasing business interruption and extra expense insurance: Regardless of the materials covered or the method of insurance coverage, every institution must establish the value of the item s to be insured, decide on the appropriate type of coverage, and establish the procedures and documentation that will be required in the event of damage or loss. It is strongly recommended that cultural institutions consult with their insurance agent to determine the proper type and amount of coverage. Setting salvage priorities is one of the most difficult aspects of emergency planning.
Disaster Preparedness and Recovery Resources for K-12 Schools
To prevent delay and disagreements among staff during a crisis, it is best to identify high-priority holdings in advance of an emergency. This requires staff to have a good overall sense of the content of the collections; ideally, a detailed inventory of collections will be available to assist in the prioritization process. As a first step, set priorities by department or by sections of the collection. Since it is most likely that an emergency will affect only a portion of the collections, these priorities are important in themselves. They can then serve as a basis for setting overall collection salvage priorities for the institution.
Generally, do not to try to set salvage priorities on an item-by-item basis. While there may be the occasional object of value that deserves to be considered on its own, it is more practical to designate groups of items for salvage. High-priority materials will vary from institution to institution. Without these materials, it may be difficult to restart operations in a timely manner.
Computer data must be included in salvage priorities; priority for salvage should go to data that are not backed up at all, and to data that do not have offsite backups. A color-coded map can be used to identify the location of high-priority items although this information must be kept secure. Collection priorities should be shared with the local fire department and local emergency management director prior to an emergency. Historically, emergency planning for cultural institutions has focused on protecting collections. In the business community, this is called continuity of operations planning COOP.
In the context of cultural institutions, staff must consider who their most important user groups are, what services are critical to provide, what resources are needed to provide them, and what steps would be needed to get those services up and running within 24 hours of an emergency. Consider what information and materials staff members would need to maintain services if they do not have access to the building and collections.
Emergency Preparedness, Response and Recovery Guide
These might include up-to-date lists of staff home telephone numbers and home email addresses; critical passwords, account numbers, ID numbers, and contact information for services; shelf lists and unique in-house indexes; and basic reference materials used daily by staff, particularly those that are difficult to find. Where would backups for this information be stored, and how would staff access them in an emergency? Financial resources will be required to restore services; appropriate arrangements should be made ahead of time so that funds will be available when needed.
This might include arranging for lines of credit and providing emergency cash or pre-arranged contracts with vendors. Business interruption and extra expense insurance can provide additional resources. Considering emergency preparedness from a business continuity perspective rather than only from a collections salvage perspective will put cultural institutions in a far better position to recover quickly from an incident. Like most modern organizations, cultural institutions are increasingly dependent on technology to provide electronic access to many different types of information. As a result, protecting information technology is essential to successful emergency planning and business recovery.
Information technology resources in cultural institutions might include online public catalogs, circulation systems, web sites, and internal computer networks that provide public and staff access to databases and other shared information. Some of this data may not be duplicated elsewhere. While in the case of collections, the focus is primarily on recovering the original item, information technology resources are usually recovered by using backups to replace or reconstruct data.
Institutions must consider various issues: Remember that during an emergency, it may be necessary to switch temporarily to manual operations for computerized services such as circulation or financial record keeping; instructions should be provided for conducting these activities manually. The emergency planning process pulls together the various activities involved in emergency management into a written plan. The first step in creating an institutional emergency plan is to gain commitment for the planning process from administrative decision-makers.
The administration must approve the expenditures of time and money required to draft and implement the plan, and provide for staff training. Put together an emergency planning committee that is responsible for moving the planning process along. The process of writing an emergency plan can be complex and time-consuming. While it is important to be as comprehensive as possible, the plan must also be simple enough to use easily.
Trying to plan for too many different scenarios is confusing, bogs down the planning process, and complicates the written plan. Focus first on those incidents that are the most likely to occur and those that might cause the most serious damage if they did occur. Additional scenarios can be added to the plan later. The written plan should summarize risk management activities, provide preparedness information, and give instructions for response. In general, the plan should include:. Additional information such as salvage priorities, insurance information, services and supplies, and risk mitigation activities is normally included in appendices.
Keep in mind that many sample emergency plans available in the library, archives, and museum literature can be adapted; it is certainly not necessary or desirable to reinvent the wheel when drafting a plan. Plan templates are listed in the Resources at the end of this leaflet. The emergency plan should be approved in writing by senior management. The approval should list all staff members and any others, such as the fire department who will be given a copy, and it should indicate where the plans will be stored.
Printed copies should be placed in all departments and at all points of contact e. Emergency planning is needed beyond the institutional level. There is a definite need for a coordinated response by the cultural community to area-wide disasters that simultaneously affect a large number of cultural institutions. Effective response to collections damage in an area-wide disaster requires significant coordination with the larger emergency management community, and several recent nationwide projects have focused on improving these relationships.
In working toward this goal, it is essential for cultural institutions to develop an understanding of how the emergency response process currently works on the local, state, regional, tribal, and federal levels. Resources related to area-wide emergency planning can be found in the Resources at the end of this leaflet.
Once an emergency plan has been prepared, remember that it will not be effective without ongoing updating. The plan should be reviewed and updated yearly. It is a good idea to assign each member of the emergency planning committee responsibility for updating specific sections. Once updating has been completed, make sure that all existing copies of the plan in all locations are replaced with the updated version. The importance of training all staff in emergency procedures and implementation of the emergency plan cannot be overstated.
Staff members are the first line of defense against emergencies, observing problems as they occur. At a minimum, include periodic reviews in staff meetings to go over basic preventive measures, proper implementation of the emergency plan, specific evacuation routes, and general emergency procedures. In all emergencies, human safety will be the highest priority.
Once that has been assured, assessment, salvage, and recovery of damaged collections should be addressed as soon as possible. The primary goals are to stabilize the condition of collections so no further damage occurs and to salvage the maximum number of valuable materials. Time is a crucial factor. If conditions are wet and warm, mold can develop in less than 48 hours. A mold outbreak will compromise successful collections recovery and can pose serious health risks.
It is helpful to assign responsibility for response and recovery efforts in advance of an emergency, as well as to consider how the recovery process will be managed. Interaction with emergency responders may be brief, or it may be extensive, as in the case of a large-scale or widespread emergency where emergency responders have extended authority over the scene and the resources needed for response. Whatever the circumstance, it is important for cultural institutions to be familiar with the Incident Command System ICS , which is the primary means for organizing emergency response at all levels within the emergency response community.
Cultural resource professionals are encouraged to become familiar with ICS principles, procedures, and terminology, and to incorporate them into their emergency planning effort by taking, at minimum, the ICS independent study course. For more information about ICS, see the Response section of the Resources at the end of this leaflet. Every cultural institution should have an incident management team that will manage response and recovery in the event of the institutional emergency.
The team will coordinate first response, salvage, and long-term rehabilitation of damaged materials and restoration of institutional services. The incident management team is led by the incident commander. Small incidents may be managed solely by the incident commander, with additional team members added for incidents that are more serious.
This follows the ICS principle of modular organization, in which the organizational structure for response develops from the top down, according to the size and complexity of the incident.
Members of the incident management team should be able to think clearly under pressure, consider all options quickly but carefully, communicate clearly with other members of the team, make decisions, and act on them. In particular, the incident commander will need to provide strong leadership in stressful circumstances. The team should be put together according to ICS organizational principles. Key roles that are likely to be needed during response are:. Maintaining a manageable span of control is also crucial e. In addition to a command structure, the ICS provides a standard planning structure for incident response.
In small incidents, the incident commander will communicate the response plan verbally to his or her subordinates. There are four overall steps in planning the response process, some of which may need to be carried out concurrently. Actions that may be required for cultural collections within each step are:. Remember that, depending on the scope of the incident, some of the actions noted above may not be needed, and some of them may be carried out concurrently. The range of situations in which this guide can be of assistance include:.
The guide is meant to assist any chamber with two things: It details a variety of governance, communication and activities that are recommended best practices in terms of being able to best support the recovery of a business community to disaster or emergency. By continuing your visit to this site, you accept the use of cookies to make easier to navigate and to make statistics of visits.
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INTRODUCTION
International Chamber of Commerce. Contact us Find a document Become a member Careers More sites. Emergency Preparedness, Response and Recovery Guide Get the document This guide is meant to be an essential resource to chambers throughout the global network to prepare, respond and help businesses recover in the event of an emergency or disaster.
The range of situations in which this guide can be of assistance include: The guide is segmented into three parts: Emergency preparedness — what chambers and businesses can do in advance of any disaster or emergency to increase resilience and the chances of recovery post event; Emergency response — what chambers can and should do in the immediate hours and days following an event; and Recovery — the role of chambers, and other related organisations, in ensuring that businesses recover back to a normalized state post event.
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