The Importance of Emergency Planning (3 of 4)
What happens without Emergency Planning?
When this library ceiling collapsed, there was no emergency plan in place. However, the initial damage was minimal; only the objects in this room required cleaning. Instructions were given to remove the objects from the room before removing the rest of the ceiling and rebuilding it.
However, no one from collections came to view the site. And, without a plan, there had been no forethought as to the effect of the building works, and no equipment was provided to protect the collections.
The removal of the ceiling spread dust through to all the adjacent rooms, and down the stairs to the floor below. This could have been avoided with simple polythene barriers between the rooms.
The end result was that over 100,000 books required cleaning, approximately 10 times the number initially affected.
