If you own treasured family artifacts, photographs and scrapbooks, and who doesn’t, then having a home disaster plan is a good idea. Anyone who lives in an area susceptible to floods, hurricanes, tornados and blizzards knows that sooner or later the inevitable will occur. It can even happen due to fire and broken water pipes.

As a librarian and a photo curator, I served on a number of disaster preparedness committees. Museum curators and librarians know that preparing for an emergency before it happens can save their collections. Most institutions have a plan that tells staff what to do just in case the worst occurs. It’s contains information on salvaging a collection, a list of helpful contacts and outlines what supplies are kept on hand to help cope with the aftermath. While it may be impossible to avoid a disaster like a hurricane there are steps you can take to prepare beforehand.

Consult Those in the Know
The Council of State Historical Records Coordinators has pulled together an online directory of disaster resources available through state archives and museums. There are articles on water damage, planning and a list of vendors that carry disaster related supplies. Consult their documents to protect your treasures, purchase necessary supplies and to prioritize what to rescue. Knowing what to do if or when disaster strikes is the first step in your home salvage operation.

Prioritize
In any emergency, first and foremost you should protect human life. However, if you have a little time before you have to leave your house, you may be able to rescue a few artifacts. When you have a house full of memories, figuring out what to save first is a dilemma. Family artifacts are not judged just on their commercial value, but their sentimental worth. A few years ago, my daughter created a box of her special items to take if we needed to evacuate the house. This container, that was small enough for her to carry comfortably, contained her favorite baby toys and a few recently purchased stuffed animals. She kept it handy for months just in case she needed to make a quick getaway.

Apply these concepts to your treasures and ask yourself a question: “If you could only save one thing what would it be?” In order for you to realistically grab that one item and run it would need to be light enough to carry. This might be a few family photographs, your grandmother’s jewelry, a scrapbook or a piece of your child’s artwork. Whatever it is, make sure you know it by heart so that you don’t have to think if time is short.

It’s also a good idea to have a priority list of what to look for when you’re cleaning up afterwards. Mud, chemicals and mold can quickly destroy photographs, documents, textiles, and furniture, so the faster you can locate those items, the quicker you can start cleaning them up and drying them out. Keeping small items like pictures and family papers in one particular storage area will help you find them. Store your family treasures in an area of your house away from windows, fireplaces and water pipes and keep them out of attics, basements and garages. The best place in your house is an interior closet.

Basic Necessities
There are certain things you need to have on hand to deal with the clean-up. Since you might not be able to purchase them in your area in the midst of a disaster, create a home disaster response kit or purchase one ready-made from ProText. Their React Paks ($189.99) are designed for libraries and museums, but you can purchase individual supplies to make your own either from ProText or your local hardware store.

Here are a few items to keep on hand:

• A plastic tub for transporting materials and for storing all the following supplies
• Clean water--for rinsing debris and contaminants off items
• Rubber gloves for handling items
• Rubber boots for walking in water damaged areas
• Large plastic storage bags (for freezing photographs, documents and textiles that can’t be cleaned and dried immediately)
• Consider purchasing an Emergency Response and Salvage Wheel from the Heritage Emergency National Task Force ($12.95). On one side are action steps for caring for nine different types of collections and on the other are salvage details. Their website contains additional details on how to save collections.

Who You Gonna Call?
When family items appear to be damaged beyond repair you won’t need Ghostbusters, but rather, conservators trained to stabilize collections. The American Institute for Conservation of Historic & Artistic Work, Inc. (http://aic.stanford.edu) has a Conservation Services Referral System on their website. Select a conservator based on their area of expertise.

A quote on the ProText website says it all, “How you react in the first hours of a library disaster can mean the difference between a legacy and a total loss.” Substitute family for library and the meaning stays the same. Planning for events out of our control will help you preserve that legacy for your descendants.

Maureen is the author of Uncovering Your Ancestry Through Family Photographs (Family Tree Books, 2005) and Preserving Your Family Photographs (Betterway, 2001). E-mail Maureen at mtaylor@taylorandstrong.com.

Copyright 2005, MyFamily.com.