National Preparedness Month
| National Preparedness Month (NPM) is an observance each September to raise awareness about the importance of preparing for disasters and emergencies that could happen at any time. For more details, visit: www.ready.gov |
National Preparedness Month (NPM) was established to increase nationwide awareness of the importance of disaster and emergency planning. For AIC members, this is an excellent time to evaluate the emergency response plan for your organization and plan events that highlight preparedness for your organization or greater community.
Preparedness should be integrated into our daily activities regardless of our specialties or disciplines. What steps have you taken to improve your organization’s preparedness this year? Need some ideas to get started? Here are a few ideas from AIC’s Emergency Committee (EC) members that you can implement at your organization:
National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)
EC co-chair Sonya Barron (NARA) is taking a page from FEMA’s National Preparedness Course Catalog to learn more about topics such as Incident Command System, Continuity of Operations, and National Response Framework. One of these courses is the National Preparedness Goal and System Overview. All these courses are free and can be completed at your own pace. You even receive a certificate of completion for each one you do.
Screenshot of a free online course offering from FEMA’s Emergency Management Institute.
University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (UHM) Library
Former EC member Malia Van Heukelem and current EC member Liane Naʻauao co-presented an “Introduction to disaster planning and response for collections” for the Weaving a Net(work) of Care for Oceanic Collections: A Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Museum Institute (NHPIMI) in Honolulu, HI. This initiative was funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and is administered through a partnership with the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (UHM) Library and the East-West Center Arts program. These partners developed the NHPIMI to provide professional development training in collections management, conservation, and exhibitions for a cohort of twenty Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander professionals working in cultural heritage institutions in Hawaiʻi, Guåhan, Saipan, American Samoa, Samoa, Fiji, Kiribati, Papua New Guinea, and Aotearoa.
NHPIMI organizers invited Malia and Liane to present a workshop on disaster preparedness; a crucial initiative for collection stewards located in geographically isolated communities across Oceania that are already facing the consequences of climate change. The workshop was split between a presentation, with time for questions and answers, and a brief hands-on salvage exercise. The presentation introduced planning tools and tips, emergency kits, the Incident Command System, forming a team, and ongoing training. This was followed by a brief canopy-building activity and a hands-on salvage exercise that focused on recovering wet materials found in libraries, archives, and museums. Malia and Liane are both AIC National Heritage Responders, trained in 2011 and 2022 respectively, and colleagues at the UHM Library.
Malia discusses handling wet archival materials during the salvage exercise. Courtesy Karen Kosasa.
National Park Service (NPS)
New EC member Joan Bacharach, NPS, recently coordinated a Fundamentals of Museum Management course for NPS museum staff that included emergency planning and fire protection sessions. The class was provided with information on risk assessments, disaster planning, mitigating hazards and vulnerabilities, emergency response, and relocation and salvage. Tools such as an emergency operations plan, risk self-assessment worksheet, response steps for different emergencies (severe weather, water leak and flood, fire, and others), supply and equipment list, and salvage procedures were included. See the NPS Museum Handbook emergency planning and museum fire protection chapters to download this useful material.
AIC Emergency Committee Resources
In support of NPM, the AIC Emergency Committee would like to remind you that resources are available to support preparedness at your museum, archive, library, or cultural center. You can find links to peer reviewed resources on the AIC Wiki.
What activities have you done or plan to do for National Preparedness Month? Let us know at emergency-comm@culturalheritage.org.
—Samantha Snell, snells@si.edu
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