 "Photo: Eric Ou/The Daily Texan")
In a talk tuesday titled “My Life in Disaster Preparedness,” a nationally known archivist spoke at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library and Museum about his experience after Hurricane Katrina and his attempts to preserve state records nationwide.
David Carmichael, director of the Georgia Division of Archives and History, expressed how important records are in an emergency such as Hurricane Katrina. Carmichael began the lecture by talking about his admiration for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which provided $2.6 million in grant money to assess government preparedness for keeping records safe.
“I want to talk about loving FEMA, which I hear not too many people like FEMA too much,” Carmichael said. “However, FEMA has a very good understanding of the importance of preserving records.”
Weeks before Katrina in August 2005, the Council of State Archivists elected Carmichael president at the New Orleans Hilton, a position he held until 2006.
“I was smiling on that day because I didn’t know what was coming in a couple of weeks,” Carmichael said.
Weeks later on Sept. 7, the Council of State Archivists became involved in the emergency management business after Hurricane Katrina hammered the Gulf Coast, Carmichael said.
After Katrina, Carmichael toured the hardest hit areas of Mississippi. He said state archivists were unprepared for Hurricane Katrina and that they needed to reassess how prepared archivists were for such large disasters.
“It’s very difficult to envision what this looks like because you have to picture standing some place and turning in a circle, and everywhere you look, it looks like this,”
Carmichael said. “I could not believe what I was seeing.”
Carmichael spoke about training state officials to determine what is essential in an emergency.
“Probably only about 4 or 5 percent of [state] records are valuable, and less than that are valuable during a disaster, so we need to train state governments on distinguishing their most valuable and necessary records,” Carmichael said.
Olivia Primanis, senior conservator for UT’s Harry Ransom Center, said the center has an emergency plan in place.
“Fortunately, we haven’t had to test it recently,” Primanis said. “Our response would be similar to Dr. Carmichael’s except that we wouldn’t have the same delay as Katrina caused.”
Primanis said the procedures for handling records after emergencies vary. She said water-damaged documents would most likely be frozen to prevent mold from growing.
“We have so many valuable documents — some dating back hundreds of years — so a plan is a great thing to have,” Primanis said.
Elizabeth Garber, president of the Society of American Archivists UT-Austin Student Chapter, helped organize the event as part of Archives Week, which ends Saturday. She spoke about the importance of records to students.
“When records are destroyed, and when history is destroyed, it has a huge impact on historical research because it can leave gaps in the record,” Garber said.
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