Picking Up The Pieces

Disasters have an uncanny habit of occurring at the most inconvenient times, damaging the equipment and materials that you can least afford to lose. Knowing what needs to be done before, during and after a disaster strikes can prevent panic, mitigate damage to reduce business interruption and, should the need arise, provide cost-effective recovery solutions. You owe it to your organization, clients, shareholders and yourself to plan ahead to reduce the loss of critical client information and the associated business disruptions.

One of the most daunting tasks faced by record and facility managers is the recovery of wet documents. Fire suppression, floods, rain, sprinkler pipe breaks and other disasters can leave paper records, microfilm and microfiche soaked with water. While you might think otherwise, 100 percent recovery is possible if you respond quickly. The basic strategy is to keep photographic media from drying and blocking and to freeze paper documents to prevent further damage.

Having a plan in place and a document recovery company identified is paramount to the success of restoring information that is damaged by prolonged exposure to liquids. Essentially, the first 24 hours are key to identifying the damage and starting the mitigation process immediately.

1. Seal the film. Photographic media (microfilm, microfiche and X-ray film) should be your first priority. Prepare a list to track the affected records. Box and seal the items to prevent drying, refrigerating the material, preferably at 35.25 to 4.25 degrees Fahrenheit, if possible.

2. Freeze the paper. Puckering, swelling, ink smearing and blocking occurs as long as paper is wet. Inventory the affected documents, pack them in boxes with plastic liners, palletize and freeze. Once frozen, the damage ceases and the loss is in stasis until restoration can be accomplished.

For critical documents and special collections, blast freezing is the best approach, but is seldom available in the time frame required. The freezing process is usually accomplished with refrigerated trucks that will transport the documents to the closest freeze-dry facility for restoration.

If, as a result of flooding, documents are covered with silt, they should be rinsed and cleaned on site before freezing. Once frozen, documents become blocks of ice; if the damaged documents amount to less than a box, separate them into modules, placing plastic or wax paper between them before freezing.

3. Separate vellum and leather-bound documents. Vellum and leather are derived from animal skin and should be carefully separated from the rest of the documents. Drying should be done slowly and in a controlled fashion. Unlike other materials, they should not be heated during the freeze-dry process.

4. Reprocess the microforms. As implied above, the emulsion layer on film will stick to contiguous substrate if it is allowed to dry, resulting in tearing and loss of data if you subsequently attempt to separate the film. Restoration involves machine reprocessing of wet microfilm and manual processing of fiche and other photographic film. Film may also be frozen for indefinite storage without further damage. For restoration, it must then be thawed and wet processed.

5. Freeze-dry frozen paper documents. The next trick is to dry the paper without exposing the documents to the liquid phase. This can be accomplished by forcing sublimation (solid-state to vapor-state drying) in a freeze-dry chamber with a sufficient vacuum.

In the event of a disaster, always notify your restoration company, as it may be able to offer situation-specific suggestions.

With the importance of the planning established, how does a records storage company choose a vendor that will have access to the vital information it’s storing with confidence?

Consider the following suggestions when selecting a disaster recovery firm to assist with your document restoration needs:

With the importance of simplicity stated, let’s consider how the basic rules you use everyday in making decisions about your organizational strategy can be massaged slightly to make them applicable to information sharing with your critical vendors.

How-to Rules. This is the aspect of planning where you should consider the special needs that your organization has regarding everything from the process by which your documents are stored to the potential need for clean rooms. For instance, an organization like the National Archives obviously has a very detailed organizational process regarding how and where specific documents are stored. When performing recovery work for this organization, it is important to understand its need to identify exactly where its documents are and in what stage of the process they are in.

Your restoration company should be able to address your special needs and the governmental and industry restrictions that go along with housing your client’s information. Restoration companies need to be guided as to how to meet the special needs of your company and those of your clients.

Limit Rules. Sometimes simple rules delineate boundaries that help restoration companies and managers sort through opportunities quickly. When an unexpected change occurs with the scope of work, what approvals are needed for the restoration company to proceed? If the changes result in an increase in cost on the order of $500, $1,000 or $25,000, when and who needs to be included in these decisions. Should the restoration company proceed or wait until a decision has been made by the appointed contact before it pursues these changes? If such issues have been discussed prior to a loss, your company has given your restoration vendor a rule of thumb to be able to make clutch decisions on your behalf that could ultimately save you time and money.

Priority Rules. Whether you are the building manager, record manager or both, you have a responsibility to your company and your clients to know what business priorities are most important.

Help Rules. Know when the loss is outside the scope of what you and your team can handle internally. Place a time limit or a volume footage limit, whichever is most applicable to your line of business, on a loss so that you can make sure to bring in the appropriate help when necessary. When losses are not handled properly, essentially more damage occurs over time, making the cost of recovery sky rocket if the loss is not remediated sufficiently.

Trust Rules. You need to trust your restoration company enough to know that when remediation is not a cost-effective means of meeting your needs, your vendor will tell you. Sometimes specific expensive equipment is not needed; other times, you could be able to handle the loss on your own. It is important to trust your restoration company enough to know that it will walk you through small losses, get a set of eyes on losses that are in question and show up on time and ready to meet your large-loss needs.

Your organization most likely already has a rough sketch of these rules established. The process of formalizing and communicating these rules will make your document restoration vendor your ally in the event that a loss occurs. n