This home was damaged during Hurricane Katrina in the Lower 9th Ward in New Orleans, Louisiana.
The broadcast for Preparing for the Next Disaster has concluded. Once transcripts and closed captioning have been completed, we will place the videos online. Thank you for your participation. Should you have any questions, please comment on this post or email Sarah M. Jackson.
NCPTT offered a free webinar “Disaster Preparedness for Cultural Resources: Preparing You For the Next Disaster” on May 22-23 from 9AM-12PM Central. The webinar was held over two days with multiple presentations providing information on preparing your historic building, site, landscape, or cemetery for natural and man-made disasters.
MayDay was designated by the Heritage Emergency National Taskforce as an initiative to protect collections from disasters. Archives, libraries, museums, and historic preservation organizations throughout the world during the month of May participate in events to increase knowledge about safeguarding these resources.
Schedule
| 9:00am | Disaster Preparedness for Buildings |
| Sarah Jackson, Architectural Conservator | |
| There are numerous steps you can take to prepare your building for natural disasters. All over this planet there are people working daily to recover from disasters. Presently in the US there are 35 states that have Active Disasters according to FEMA. They range from flooding, snow, hurricanes, tornadoes, to wildfires. While these did not all happen today or even this week it means that there are still people recovering and rebuilding their lives. Being prepared can reduce damage and leave you better prepared to recover after a disaster has hit. | |
| 9:45am | Disaster Plans |
| Dr. Mary Striegel, Chief Materials Research Program | |
| Disaster plans come in all shapes and sizes. Some are based on multiple teams undertaking a variety of tasks while others are a simple means of safeguarding cultural heritage. This will highlight different types of plans and describe resources available to the Manager of cultural resources. | |
| 10:30am | Disaster Apps |
| Andy Ferrell, Chief Architectural and Engineering | |
| Ed Fitzgerald, Research Assistant | |
| NCPTT has been involved in some exciting work, leveraging mobile devices to provide cultural resource managers with tools to aid in disaster response efforts. This session will cover the benefits and pitfalls of using mobile devices for disaster response. Presenters will discuss ERS: Emergency Response and Salvage, an app to help users protect collections and significant records, access reliable information instantly, and save damaged objects. This session will also cover NCPTT’s on-going work to develop mobile forms for assessing disaster-damaged buildings and other resources. | |
| 11:15am | Lessons Learned from Recent Oil Spills |
| Dr. Carol Chin, Conservation Scientist | |
| Recent oil spills have provided perspectives on appropriate preparedness and response strategies for crude oil contamination. This session will discuss the protection of historic resources from oil contamination, and when and how to address contamination if it occurs |
| 9:00am | Disaster Preparedness and Response for Historic Cemeteries |
| Jason Church, Material Conservator | |
| This thirty minute webinar session will cover both the basics needed to start planning your historic cemetery for a natural or manmade disaster and how to respond to that disaster. This webinar will focus on historic cemeteries and not address the issues of body relocation or identification.NCPTT Damage Assessment Tools | |
| 9:45am | Archeological Sites after Disasters |
| Tad Britt, Chief Archeology and Collections | |
| The focus of this session is to prepare the audience of what may occur to archeological sites as the result of a natural or man-made disaster. The webinar will emphasize field documentation techniques and appropriate response strategies depending on the type and extent of the disaster. | |
| 10:30am | Picking Up The Pieces: Resource Documentation & Post-Disaster Recovery at the Bayou Folk Museum Kate Chopin House |
| Dustin Fuqua, Chief of Resources Management, CARI | |
| What began as a project to document the cultural resources of the Bayou Folk Museum regrettably developed into an effort to salvage the museum collection and preserve the site of the fire-razed Kate Chopin House. In this presentation, Dustin Fuqua will recount his experiences involving a 2007 Cane River National Heritage Area-funded collections management project and the subsequent disaster recovery process following the fire that destroyed the Kate Chopin House on October 1, 2008. The presentation will include a discussion of the CRNHA grant project, efforts to salvage the museum collection and NHL site, disaster recovery techniques, and lessons learned via a case study of the Bayou Folk Museum catastrophe. | |
| 11:15am | Trees: Storm Preparation and Recovery |
| Debbie Dietrich-Smith, Chief Historic Landscape Program | |
| Losing a mature tree creates a void in the landscape and its demise often jeopardizes buildings and other cultural features. This session will focus on ways to safeguard against major tree loss before a storm and how to recover after a disaster. |
For more information or to register please contact Sarah Marie Jackson by email at sarah_m_jackson@nps.gov.