Metropolitan Public Library: Basement flood from a water main break

Summary

Susan is her library's emergency coordinator. She has been called in to the library by the director at 6:00 in the morning because a flood has been reported in the library archives, which are in the building's basement. The flood was caused by a break in a water main in the street outside, a problem that the city's public works department has resolved. Susan cautiously makes her way down the basement steps. With the aid of a flashlight, she can see that the water is about 30 centimeters (one foot) deep. The basement has shelves standing five high that hold about 500 document boxes of records and some microfilm. The boxes of archives and manuscripts on the top three shelves appear to be dry, but everything on the bottom two shelves is at least partially submerged. The electricity appears to be off, there are no windows in the basement, and the temperature is quite low. Susan has had someone telephone members of the disaster action team, and they are on their way to the library. Her library director is waiting for Susan to decide on a plan of action.

The problem

What should Susan's first course of action be?

The library staff will be arriving for their normal duties at 0800 hours. How can Susan best deploy their efforts?

The library's archivist has been notified, but he cannot seem to decide on any top priorities, telling Susan that everything is of equal value. What should be saved first?

What should be Susan's drying strategy?

Answer:

What should Susan's first course of action be?

Susan first makes sure that the electricity is completely turned off so that she can safely enter the water. She confers with the facilities manager about pumping the water from the area and about the equipment she will need to salvage the collection and dry the space. When the disaster action team members arrive, Susan meets with them to outline her strategy and seek their opinion. She assigns different tasks to the team members, with the assumption that each will supervise staff when recovery begins.

The library staff will be arriving for their normal duties at 0800 hours. How can Susan best deploy their efforts?

Since the basement has no regular circulation of air, the risk of mold developing is high, especially because the temperature is low. Susan decides to remove all the records from the area. From the emergency supplies, Susan sets up power cables and portable lighting units, ensuring that they are deployed well above the surface of the water. She gives each of the disaster action team members a hard hat to identify them as leaders, then organizes them into four groups, with the team members directing staff to:

• Remove boxes from the shelves, starting with the dry boxes nearest the door.
• Form a human chain, passing the boxes up the stairs to the floor above.
• Stack the dry boxes out of the way in a secure area.

What should be Susan's drying strategy?

The staff finish this work quickly and turn to the next step: removing and recovering the wet and partially wet boxes. By this time the pumping has lowered the water level in the basement, making the task easier. The team members instruct the staff to start taking the wet boxes from the shelves, asking them to:

• Make every effort to keep the wet boxes intact, to avoid problems in keeping the records properly organized.

• Tilt the wet boxes to allow the water to pour out, then pass them on to the human chain.

• Pass the boxes up the stairs, then place them on book trucks for transport to the drying area (located on that floor).

• Remove the records from the boxes for air drying, while keeping the records from each box separate from the others.

The staff use a label to indicate the number for each group of records. And they immediately discard the empty wet boxes.

• Keep wet microfilm in the film boxes secured with rubber bands and place the film boxes in a container of clean water to await drying treatment by a film processor.