Larry, John and Pat have all raised excellent points. I well remember
working on a disaster recovery plan for Enron back in the late 80s
early 90s. Part of that plan included extensive pre-disaster
preparation work. But overall records management folks would not be
allowed back into an area until law enforcement authorities (or fire
officials if the building had burned) until they felt the area was safe.

Now what can ARMA do in the future. one thing would be to harness the
power of the web. ARMA needs to be much more responsive and needs to
publicize the efforts. Look what the Society of Southwest Archivists
was able to do in short order
http://www.ssacares.org/

yes a specific website

or what the ALA  has done. Each day since the Katrina struck they have
issued a news update
<<http://www.ala.org/al_onlineTemplate.cfm?Section=alonline&template=/Con
tentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=103996>>

http://shrinkster.com/816

How about ARMA working with folks such as BMS-CAT, Munters and Document
Reprocessors, NARA etc to develop a disaster planning kit that would be
made available prior to hurricane season. They could even work with
local newspapers in the hurricane zones to include articles about
disaster preparedness prior to hurricane season. could be published in
conjunction with the hurricane tracking maps that the newspapers issue.

Finally working with SAA, ALA and NARA, ARMA could identify archives
and collections that reside in vulnerable areas and provide them with
the means to do self-assessments of the disaster preparedness status.

anyway those are my thoughts.

Peter A. Kurilecz
Richmond, Va
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