Article by Randy Roeder, University of Iowa

(continued)

National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library

Certainly the image of the peaked roof of the Czech & Slovak Museum & Library, surrounded by muddy, swirling water will be one of the enduring memories of the flood of 2008. Although staff were able to remove a part of the textile collection and some other treasures in the days leading up to the flood, a rapid rise and higher-than-anticipated crest meant that most materials remained in the building. The destruction to museum buildings and collections was massive. City officials, perhaps overly cautious, were reluctant to allow staff back in to salvage the collections. Access was denied until June 19th. As a result, mold development was substantial.

Once again, Steamatic set up generators and lighting equipment. The sights that presented themselves were uniformly grim. The library took 5 1/2 feet of water. The strong current had deposited even more mud that it had at the African American Museum. Hundreds of volumes had been swept onto the floor and were buried in muck. They were unidentifiable and could not be assessed until cleaned. Books on the upper half of the shelving units had swollen to the point that they could not be pulled of the shelf. Staff and volunteers soon learned that the most efficient way to remove them was to knock one or two sacrificial volumes loose by pounding them out with a rubber mallet.

With so many library resources needing cleaning, it was decided to wash the bulk of the material, pack it on the freezer trucks, and do the triage after the items were returned from the Chicago drying facility. Numerous LPs and 78 rpm sound recordings - a highlight of the Library's collections - presented a problem in that freezing is not recommended. The records, along with a number of other "no-freeze" items were shipped to the University of Iowa Oakdale campus for drying and cleaning. Flatwork - maps, posters, paper artwork and the like -- were transported to the conservation lab at the State Historical Society of Iowa in Iowa City.

Textile conservators from the Chicago Conservation Center came on site to clean fabrics. The shared wood conservator was invaluable in assessing the specialized needs of a substantial collection that ranged from items of furniture to weaponry.

Johnson County Historical Society

The Iowa River crested on June 15 several feet lower than originally predicted. The city of Coralville experienced record flooding and substantial damage to businesses located on 1st Avenue and Second Street. The basements of a number of structures that were near the flood area flooded-- not from surface water but from underground seepage. The basement archives, located in an 1876 school house, took on several feet of water.

Compared to the situation in Cedar Rapids, the water was clean and the damage was relatively straight forward. The bottom shelf of materials - most in book format - were soaked. The items were packed out, boxed, and loaded on to Steamatic freezer trucks, to be taken to a Texas drying facility.

Lessons learned

The staff at the affected institutions was able to respond to the situation quickly because of disaster preparedness training. Although no amount of coursework seems adequate to prepare an individual for an event of this scale, familiarity with preservation concepts allowed staff to anticipate the steps to be taken to put their organizations on the path to recovery. Panic-driven decisions were minimized, and collection officers had an understanding that resources many would consider to be lost could indeed be salvaged.

The flooded organizations were able to save on the cost of salvaging their collections. The salvage company was able to use its staff with less downtime, one Steamatic supervisor handled all three operations, fewer freezer trucks were needed and fewer trips were made to the drying facility in Texas. Outside preservation consultants were able to reduce travel expenses by servicing several clients in a single trip. Local preservation consultants from the University of Iowa and the Iowa State Historical Society were able to coordinate their efforts and develop a strategy for local treatment of items that were not suitable for freezing.

The fact that University of Iowa Libraries and the Iowa State Historical Society did not flood allowed their preservation staffs ample time to work with the affected institutions. Had this not been the case, the flooded organizations would still have realized substantial benefits by taking a cooperative approach to their recovery. Coordination would have been much more difficult as each institution would have been preoccupied with the immediate task at hand. Alternative arrangements would have been required to care for those collections not suited for freezing, and the costs for treating these items would have been greater.