September is National Preparedness Month, making it a good time to check in on your organization’s emergency preparedness. For collecting institutions, emergencies can take many forms, from severe weather and power outages to roof leaks, burst pipes, fires, and other events that put collections, buildings, and people at risk.
Emergency planning can also feel like a daunting task, particularly for small organizations with limited staff and resources. Developing a comprehensive plan takes time, and it can be difficult to know where to begin. Even organizations that already have an emergency plan need to revisit it periodically as staff, collections, buildings, vendors, and procedures change.
The important thing to remember is that emergency preparedness does not have to be an all-or-nothing project. Taking one practical step now can improve your organization’s ability to respond to an emergency and provide a starting point for additional planning.
In recognition of National Preparedness Month, here are five small things you can do with big impact to strengthen your organization’s emergency preparedness.
1. Start or update your Pocket Response Plan
A full emergency plan contains a lot of information, but in the first minutes of an emergency, you need quick access to a relatively small amount of it.
The Council of State Archivists’ Pocket Response Plan™, or PReP™, provides a simple format for recording essential information needed during an emergency. This includes staff contacts, emergency responders, insurance information, vendors, and basic response procedures. Copies can be kept in wallets, at home, or in other locations where they remain accessible if staff cannot enter the building.
If your organization already has a PReP, this is a good time to review it. Staff members change, phone numbers change, vendors change, and procedures that were accurate a few years ago may no longer reflect how your organization operates. The same is true of a more comprehensive emergency plan, which should be reviewed and updated at least annually.
And if you already have a full emergency plan but do not have a PReP or another quick-response guide, consider creating one. During an emergency, staff may not have the time or ability to locate and navigate a longer plan. A concise response guide puts the most immediately useful information in a format that can be kept readily accessible.
Do one thing: Start a PReP, review and update your existing PReP or emergency plan, or create a quick-response guide to accompany your full plan.
2. Check your emergency supplies
Many collecting institutions have accumulated at least some emergency response supplies over time. The question is whether those supplies will be ready and easy to find when they are needed.
Take a look at your emergency supply cache and see what is actually there. Supplies may have been used and never replaced, batteries may need to be changed, or materials may have been moved to another part of the building. Make sure containers and storage locations are clearly labeled so that someone who did not assemble the cache can quickly identify and access emergency supplies.
The location of your supplies should also be documented. Mark emergency supply caches on a floor plan or building map and include their locations in your emergency plan, PReP, or other quick-response guide. In an emergency, staff should not have to rely on one person remembering where the plastic sheeting or wet-vac is stored.
If your organization does not yet have a dedicated emergency supply cache, it does not need to be assembled all at once. Many useful supplies are inexpensive and can be added gradually. Our previous DHPS Tips post, Emergency Supplies on a Shoestring, offers suggestions for building a useful cache while working within a limited budget.
Do one thing: Check and replenish your existing emergency supplies, make sure the cache is clearly labeled and documented in your emergency plan, or purchase one item to begin building your cache.
3. Make sure important collections information is backed up
Emergency preparedness is not limited to physical supplies and response procedures. The records your organization maintains about its collections can also be critical during response and recovery.
Consider what information you would need if you arrived at work tomorrow and could not enter the building. Collections inventories and catalogs can help determine what materials were located in an affected area. Accession records and other collections documentation may contain important information about ownership, provenance, restrictions, condition, and the history of individual objects or collections. Photographs and insurance documentation may also be needed to document losses.
Now consider where that information is stored. If the only copy of an inventory, accession record, or other critical documentation is on a computer, server, or in a filing cabinet inside the affected building, it may be inaccessible at exactly the time it is needed.
Review how your essential collections records are backed up and whether current copies can be accessed from another location. A useful framework is the 3-2-1 approach to digital storage: maintain three copies of important files, on two different types of storage media, with at least one copy stored offsite. Recollection Wisconsin’s Digital Storage 3-2-1 Plan provides a simple worksheet for reviewing your current storage and backup practices and identifying steps you can take to improve them. This is also a good opportunity to confirm that your backups are actually working and that the appropriate staff know how to access them.
Do one thing: Choose one set of important collections records, such as your collections inventory or accession records, and find out how it is currently backed up. If you do not have a 3-2-1 system in place, identify one step you can take toward creating one.
4. Review your salvage priorities
Good collections documentation can tell you what you have and where it is. In an emergency, you may also need to know what should receive attention first.
When collections are affected by water, fire, or another emergency, it may not be possible to address every item at the same time. Establishing salvage priorities in advance can help staff make decisions more quickly when time and resources are limited.
Determining those priorities involves more than identifying the objects or collections with the greatest monetary value. Organizations may also need to consider historical or institutional significance, vulnerability to damage, replaceability, location, and whether materials can realistically and safely be retrieved or treated during an emergency. DHPSNY’s webinar Not-So-Impossible Choices: Determining Priorities for Collection Salvage walks through the process of developing salvage priorities and offers practical strategies for making these (sometimes difficult) decisions.
Like other critical collections records, your salvage priority list should be kept current, backed up, and accessible even if you cannot enter the building or access your usual computer systems. Priorities should be specific enough to help someone locate the materials quickly, which might mean identifying a particular collection, shelving range, storage cabinet, or other physical location. Marking priorities on a floor plan can make this information even more useful during an emergency.
Do one thing: Identify one collection, storage area, or group of materials that should be prioritized for salvage, or review your existing salvage priorities and make sure they are current, clearly located, and accessible offsite.
5. Connect with your local fire department
Building relationships with local first responders before an emergency occurs can help both your organization and the people who may eventually respond to an incident there.
Consider inviting your local fire department to conduct a walkthrough of your facility. A visit can familiarize responders with the building, its access points, utility shutoffs, fire protection systems, collections storage areas, and any unusual hazards. It is also an opportunity to share information about your collections and salvage priorities. Depending on the circumstances of an emergency, first responders may be the only people able to safely enter the building, so knowing where priority collections are located can be valuable information.
A walkthrough also gives staff an opportunity to learn how responders will approach an incident at the site and what information would be most useful to them. Ask whether there are building plans, emergency contacts, or other information they would like to have on file.
Even if first responders have visited in the past, another walkthrough may be worthwhile if significant time has passed or if your building, collections, or staff have changed. DHPSNY’s webinar Emergency Planning: Working with First Responders provides additional guidance for establishing and maintaining these relationships.
Do one thing: Contact your local fire department and ask about scheduling a walkthrough, or check when they last visited and whether the emergency and collections information they have on file is still current.
Building these steps into an emergency plan
Each of these activities can improve your organization’s preparedness on its own, but they are also pieces of a larger emergency planning process. Contact information, emergency supplies, collections documentation, relationships with first responders, and salvage priorities all become more useful when they are incorporated into a plan that staff understand and know how to use.
This November, DHPSNY will offer Writing an Emergency Plan for Collecting Institutions, an online course designed to help participants develop that plan in manageable phases. The course will introduce the PReP as a starting point and guide participants through translating identified risks into practical response procedures, establishing goals and priorities, and developing response, salvage, and recovery procedures appropriate for their organizations.
Emergency planning does not have to begin with setting aside enough time to write an entire plan from beginning to end. It can begin with checking a phone number, looking through a supply bin, confirming that a backup works, making a phone call, or identifying a collection that would need attention first.
For National Preparedness Month, choose one place to start. Once that piece is in place, you can build from there to feel confident and ready should a need arise.
Do you have a preservation topic, question, or creative solution you would like us to cover in this series? Reach us by email at info@DHPSNY.org, or connect with us on the DHPSNY Facebook page or DHPSNY Community Facebook Group.