A “Water Event” at Lane Community College Archives

<<Posted on behalf of Elizabeth Uhlig, Archivist at LCC>>

On Wednesday, April 18, 2007, the Archives at Lane Community College in Eugene, Oregon, experienced a ‘water event’ aka ‘the flood’. About 10:00 am I heard some unexpected noises from one of our storage areas, unlocked the door, and was hit by a wave of humid air. I heard a large gushing of water and then realized there was about an inch of water on the floor. I quickly called for help and two technicians from IT whose offices are next door came and helped to spread plastic sheeting over the effected shelves.

The Archives is located in the basement of the Center building, directly beneath the cafeteria. Facilities Management had been dealing with overflowing drains that morning, not realizing it was also impacting the Archives. It appears that somehow a t-shirt got into a drainage pipe (maybe it was flushed from a toilet) and that caused the water to back up and flood part of the cafeteria and then drain into the Archives.

For photos, go to these two websites. The first contains photos taken on Wednesday, the other website contains photos taken on Thursday and Friday.

Photos of the damage can be viewed at http://picasaweb.google.com/LCCArchives & http://picasaweb.google.com/library.lcc

I called Facilities Management and reported the problem, and then contacted Normandy Helmer, Access and Preservation Officer for Special Collections and University Archives at the University of Oregon. Normandy is also the contact/resource person for disaster response and recovery for archives and libraries in Oregon. My next call was to Belfor, a flood and fire recovery service.

We had great support and a quick response from the college Facilities Management staff – from housekeepers, plumbers, painters, groundskeepers and gardeners, and many more. Within about an hour or so we had removed all the wet and damp boxes from the shelves and placed them in the aisles of the other storage room. The plumbers worked hard to stop the leak, others used mops and wet vacuums to get the water off the floor. Facilities staff took samples of the water to get it tested to see if there was any contamination, since the source of the water was not certain, and to plan for any necessary decontamination.

Throughout the afternoon on Wednesday we evaluated the boxes and their contents. We were fortunate that the boxes were all standard records boxes and contained paper records for the most part – no photographs and other media. We set up a triage area and designed an impromptu work flow. Those boxes that were soaking wet or very wet were identified and then taken by Belfor to be freeze-dried. We felt we could deal with the other boxes and began to remove damp folders from the wet boxes and transferred them to dry boxes. By late Wednesday afternoon, about half (approximately 75) of the most severely damaged boxes were reboxed and taken to an offsite area in another building where we set up a recovery work area. Belfor set up dehumidifiers and fans in the two storage areas in the Archives.

On Thursday, April 19, the remaining water-damaged records were removed to the recovery site. Ten-foot high fencing was erected around the work area. A crew from Belfor then began to enclose this area with plastic sheeting. This took most of the day, and by 5:00 they had completed a sealed space inside of which were the damp records, two large dehumidifiers and a huge fan, which then ran all night.

On Friday, April 20, with several volunteers (faculty, staff and a
student) we began evaluating the boxes were dry but some still contained damp records. Damp folders were spread on tables and later, when they had dried, were reboxed. Records that had dried overnight, were set aside.

Work came to a halt after an hour or two when we were told that laboratory tests showed that the water that had leaked may be contaminated with coliform. Those of us working on the damp records in the recovery work area stopped working immediately. The college is consulting with an industrial hygienist to develop a plan to finalize the cleaning of the Archives and to determine how to proceed with recovery efforts on the archival materials. Until that plan is in place, recovery work on the records has stopped.

In all, about 283 boxes had water damage: 51 boxes were taken to be freeze-dried; 181 boxes with damp records in were sent to the offsite recovery work area for processing; 51 boxes with minimal water damage had dried out over night and remained in the Archives to await reshelving. An additional 150 boxes had no water damage but had to be moved from the bottom shelves so that the shelving could dry out. Altogether, this is approximately 10% of our holdings. I don’t believe we will loose any records. I’m confident that we will be able to dry out and salvage all our materials and return them to the Archives in fine shape, although maybe a little wrinkled.

It has been an amazing but stressful experience. I’ve been impressed and am grateful for the support and hard work of many people from the college’s Facilities Management who have worked hard to facilitate the recovery and who have been sensitive to the needs of the archival records. Also, the support from the Library director, Nadine Williams, and from Normandy Helmer has been invaluable, both professionally and personally. This experience has taught me a lot about disaster response and recover, to say the least!

I’ll also be posting updates on the Archives webpage, so check there for further news. http://www.lanecc.edu/archives/

Elizabeth Uhlig, Archivist
Lane Community College Archives
4000 East 30th Avenue
Eugene, OR 97405
541-463-5466
uhlige AT lanecc dot edu