Some of my worst "physical records" stories involved client sites- cement
plants, iron ore processing plants, and natural gas compressor stations...
and establishing the first electronic indexing system for a Public Utility
company's engineering records after 80+ years of manual systems.
On the electronic side, they included conversion projects for engineering
and construction drawings in the 80s and 90s between different platforms and
applications, and more recently, documents and specifications from the same
period that weren't periodically migrated.
On the disaster recovery side? A major flood in the late 80s that water
damaged a large volume of critical documents and drawings, recovery of
records after the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989, recovery as a volunteer
following a courthouse fire in mid-90s, and one worse case scenario...
In the mid 80s, an underground transformer explosion and fire that smoke
damaged a large collection of sensitive records being used in support of an
active legal case. The smoke was tainted with PCBs (Polychlorinated
biphenyls) that were used as insulating oils in the transformers. After the
smoke had been evacuated, the basement and records room were surveyed and
determined to be contaminated pretty badly... so a recovery plan had to be
developed. There were hundreds of linear feet of documents on open
shelving, all of which were being used a reference and support documents in
a case, and yep, this was prior to scanners and imaging as an option. All
had been Bates stamped and indexed, so we couldn't simply go back to the
source materials and re-copy and start over, they had to be recovered from
this collection.
After determining what type of protective gear would be required, 2 of us
went in to survey how badly damaged the materials were and look at the
actual conditions to evaluate what options we had. Everything had a sort of
oily film on it, so obviously anything we wanted to salvage was going to
have to be cleaned or replaced in some manner. One saving grace was there
was a set of double doors that were gasketed on the records storage room, so
the adjacent hallway was unaffected.
Phase one determined that not all of the records were essential or needed
for the case, and the index helped identify "A,B,C" priorities... "A" had to
be recovered ASAP, "B" should be recovered,but could possibly be recopied
from source materials, "C" could be destroyed. Next was to determine the
process for recovery. We looked at building plans and decided the wall next
to the door had no wiring or plumbing in it, so after talking with the
building engineer, it was decided a window could be installed in the wall
for viewing. This would allow someone outside the room to look at the "B"
category materials through the window and decide if they had to be recovered
or not.
After we determined how many items had to be recovered, we had to figure out
how to accomplish this. The items in the room were not able to be removed
due to the contamination; they were all going to have to be bagged and
ultimately destroyed. So... we brought a copier into the room and traced a
pattern on the wall for the output 'chute' and they cut a hole in the wall
to accommodate it. The machine was then placed against the wall and all of
the items were copied and the 'clean' copies were collected outside of the room.
And yes, those of us inside prepping and copying the documents had to wear
clean room suits with SCBA and tanks, and the room had a vestibule for
changing from street clothes to our "suits" and changing air tanks.
Total time to accomplish the copying was three weeks and I don't remember
the number of copies made now, but this story was written up in the Records
Retrieval Report back in the mid to late 90s once. Good times....
Larry
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