Disaster Recovery News

Image from the Kentucky Derby Museum

Using a disaster as an opportunity to renovate, the Kentucky Derby Museum opens its doors after experiencing $5.5 million in water damage. Flash floods that devastated the Louisville area caused the museum to close its doors on August 4, 2009 as its basement and main floor were under water.

Extensive Water Damage

WLKY.com reports (emphasis added):

“…Staffers had to wade knee-deep in water to save museum artifacts.

“Staff workers said they used emergency lighting to lift artifacts out of flood water and stacked them in any dry area they could find.

“Despite the efforts, more than 2,000 items from the collections and archives were lost due to significant water damage.

“At the museum, a video exhibit now shows the devastation of the flood as it was happening.”

Document and Book Drying

Unfortunately, wet documents and wet books were lost in the Kentucky Derby Museum’s flood remediation process. The museum’s websites states: “… These items include photographs, historic newspaper clippings, race meet programs, racing forms, chart books and other historical records.” The areas of the museum devastated by the floodwaters were renovated and new exhibits are in their place.

The causes of the failed document drying or book drying are not specifically mentioned on the Kentucky Derby Museum’s website. However, there are proven techniques that will dry wet documents and books even after they have experienced significant water damage.

Get Questions about Document Drying Answered

No business is immune to water damage, whether it is from a flood or due to a leaky pipe. If you are in the Boston area this week, visit the Rapid Refile booth (# 2251) at the RIMS Conference from April 25-29, 2010 at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. The Rapid Refile team will be there to answer your questions about the document-drying process and help get businesses set up with preventative measures in the case of a disaster.

Picture by Justin Brockie

Scenario:

It’s a late night at the office, and your meeting with a client just finished. All you want to do is go home, heat up some leftovers and call it a night. So you do: you leave the client documents out on the meeting table in your office. You guess there’s really no need to put them in your file cabinet—it’s just one night. All you worry about is how fast you can make it into your car in this freezing weather. You are so happy it’s the weekend.

The next morning you get a call from your business partner: your office is flooded and he doesn’t know where the phone number for the document drying company is. The pipes froze sometime during the night and burst. The documents and books in the waterproof/fireproof file cabinets are fine. Everything else is soaked. Your client’s paperwork are still on the meeting table; all the documents are wet.

This can happen to anyone and to any business–and it has. Take the campus of the University of Rhode Island, for example. The recent Rhode Island flood caused about $2 million in damages to administrative and academic buildings. Efforts are currently underway to prevent mold damage. The closures because of the flood damage cost the university a loss in revenue, as it has had to cancel and postpone its programs and close community resources as they remediate the flood damage.

Water, no matter how it creeps into a building, can cause businesses of any size to suffer huge losses. Is your business prepared for unexpected flood damage? Does your disaster plan include document recovery?

Find Your Document Drying Options

If you know you need a document drying and recovery plan for your business but aren’t sure what to do or where to start, look for us at the annual RIMS Conference. This conference takes place April 25-29, 2010 at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, and Rapid Refile will be there to answer all your flood prevention and recovery questions. Rapid Refile has top experts in the document-reprocessing field who can provide you with information about disaster recovery, document drying, book drying and reclamation.

Visit Rapid Refile at the RIMS Conference at booth 2251.