ALIA Academic, Research and Collection Management

After the flood: Disaster management in action

On 27 July 27 2005, ARCoM hosted an afternoon seminar on Disaster Management at the Barr Smith Library in Adelaide. 'After the flood: Disaster management in action' focussed on the recent flood and recovery experience of the Barr Smith Library, and attracted around 34 library and information professionals from different sectors of the library community. An optional tour provided attendees with an opportunity to view the flood-affected areas prior to the presentations.

Speakers at the event were: Bob Reilly - Risk Manager for the University of Adelaide; Peter Zajicek - Senior Conservator, State Library of South Australia; and, from the Barr Smith Library: Stephen Beaumont - Facilities and Planning Librarian; Cheryl Hoskin - Special Collections Librarian; and Robina Weir, Lending Services Librarian.

Barr Smith Library Flood Scenario

The flood occurred on 11 March 2005 when a fire main was damaged during construction works at the North Terrace campus, resulting in the closure of the library for three days and limited access thereafter.

200 000 litres of water covered an area of 1200 square metres, affecting over 100 000 items and damaging 10 000 books, while 40 tonne of mud collected in the Plant Room and 3000 volumes were so damaged that they required professional treatment.

Reilly, Bob; and Lumen Winter 2005, http://www.lumen.adelaide.edu.au/issues/5381/news5587.html

Bob Reilly was part of the Emergency Response Team. He provided an overview of the initial response to this disaster, from activation of alarms and evacuation of the building, to the declaring of coded disaster zones, security, and the process of shutting down. He estimated that the flooding incident had the potential to shut down the university for an entire semester and effect a loss of $90m, had it not been managed effectively.

IT services were disrupted as water covered the floor of the server room and the IT Department was forced to relocate to a building in Pirie Street, also impacting on IT services at Flinders University and UNISA.

Reilly described the team's 'hearts and minds' approach to disaster management, emphasising their attempts to make things comfortable for staff and students by setting up a security process to allow people to recover their personal effects, and a communication strategy to keep them informed of developments. They also worked quickly to replace wet and damaged carpet with temporary carpet tiles, and replace damaged ceiling tiles with plasterboard.

Stephen Beaumont prefers to call it 'The water incident', rather than the flood. His presentation covered the many types of hazard, damage and loss presented by the incident, such as: swelling, sticking, warping, mould, rust, salt, odour, and electrical dangers from the water; power outage affecting the lights and lifts, network loss, phone loss (there was a fire in the switchboard on the same morning), service interruption - classes had to be rescheduled, loss of income, and increased risk of accidents.

He compared a textbook version of the stages of response:

• Safety
• Assessment
• Response
• Recovery
• Resolution

with the stages of response to the Barr Smith Library incident:

• Warn people about the flood hazard
• Evacuate
• Electrical safety (power shut down)
• Assessment to determine the extent of the problem
• Fire crews and SES arrive

Some practical points offered by Stephen were:

• Dehumidifiers (from Munters) were brought in to assist with drying
• Helmets with lamps attached were extremely useful in dark areas

Also, wet vacs, blankets from the sick room, and sheets of plastic were all useful in helping to clean up, stem the flow of water, and protect books. He emphasised the importance of keeping records of time and money spent on the recovery process, for insurance purposes.

According to Peter Zajicek, two essential things to have in place are a disaster plan and a regularly updated telephone list in print format. A disaster phone list should also include information about each person's function in the event of an incident, as well as a priority for contacting them.

Having a contact number of a conservator is an important consideration, and Zajicek mentioned that Adelaide City Council, ArtLab and the State Library of SA all have conservators on staff.

The conservator's perspective naturally covered topics such as the growth of mould and the unsuitability of some items for placing in freezer containers.

Cheryl Hoskin spoke at length about the process of sorting and identifying books with varying degrees of dampness and damage. Drying teams were established to work around the clock standing the damp books on end with pages fanned, and rotating them from time to time to assist with drying. Very wet books had their pages interleaved with blotting paper (found in the 'disaster store'), and many books were moved into a large freezer container to slow the absorption of water. Most books were dry after a week, however thousands had to be sent away for professional drying at Munters in Parramatta.

2648 books were frozen on the day and conservators from ArtLab confirmed that the correct procedures were being followed. An initial quote of around $40 000, for professional drying, rose to $135 000. The process was demanding and depended on committed staff time.

The books were found to have various types of damage such as: swollen paper and binding, discolouration and staining from silt, dirt and dye, crinkling, bubbled covers, and paper coated with size / glue. Cheryl brought along some exhibits to demonstrate the different types of damage. She also mentioned that items were given the status 'flood damaged' on the library management system to enable the tracking of any future deterioration.

Robina Weir spoke on the topic of maintaining library services. Because of the closure, there was a huge backlog of books waiting to be discharged and these needed to be backdated so as not to accrue demerit points.

Each day, handouts were produced to inform library patrons about the progress of recovery, and to confirm the accessibility status of various parts of the collection. These procedures helped to reduce the number of enquiries at the counter and information desk.

Signage was vital in regulating access to particular areas and colour coded badges were used by staff to determine who could enter areas out of bounds to the public. A paging system was established so that patrons could request books from the shelves and be notified once staff had retrieved them.

I have only touched, here, on the topics and issues raised. The presentations, some of which were supported by digital photographs of the flood damage, conveyed a wealth of combined experience in disaster management principles, and invited some interesting questions and comments from the audience.

The afternoon ended on a lighter note as Robina Weir shared some of the humourous names invented by staff to keep up morale during the clean up - the Information Desk became the Information Deck, for example, and the library was dubbed the Bath Smith Library.

Debra Zott