Essential Records for Families—Safeguarding the records that protect your family’s health, identity, and financial resources  Records and Disasters—Executive Briefing for Georgia Officials (PowerPoint Presentation, 25 MB download) Ten Strategies for Protecting Government's Essential Operating Records (the pdf) Disaster Preparedness Planning—Advice for government officials, records management officers, and other records custodians on identifying potential dangers to records and preparing a disaster plan. Emergency Response Tips for Wet or Damaged Objects—Tips for handling wet books, documents, photographs, glass, leather, metals, paintings, etc. Mitigating Potential Hazards to Materials and Individuals Following a Disaster—Includes links to health assistance and information and disaster preparedness and prevention. Resources to Aid in Salvaging Personal Belongings—Links to organizations which can help you with advice on salvaging your belongings after a disaster. Responding to a Mold Outbreak—Tips for dealing with mold in your records or archives facility. Selected Sources for Recovery—List of disaster recovery services and commercial vendors.

Fillable Forms and Templates For Your Archives' Disaster Plan

The PDF forms are formatted so that they may be completed electronically and printed out for inclusion in a disaster plan. If you have the full version of Adobe Acrobat®, you can save the completed form for future editing. The Disaster Plan Template and PReP are Microsoft Word 97-2003 documents that can be saved to a local computer for customization.

Records Disaster Response Plan—Use this fill-in-the-blank template to create a disaster plan for a records or archival organization.

Disaster Prevention and Safety Checklist—This checklist will aid institutions in conducting building inspections for safety and disaster readiness.

Emergency Supplies stockpile Checklist—Maintaining a stockpile of emergency supplies is essential to a quick response.

Offsite Equipment and Services—Keep track of contact information for services and supplies your archives might need in the event of a disaster.

Pocket Response Plan (PReP)—The Council of State Archivists (CoSA) developed this template as part of its Emergency Preparedness Initiative. Side A is an Emergency Communications Plan and Side B provides an Emergency Response Checklist. It can be downloaded in Microsoft Word or as a fillable PDF and customized for any organization, then printed double-sided on a sheet of legal-size paper, trimmed and folded to fit into a Tyvek envelope that will fit in a wallet.

Disaster Preparedness Information

These sites have lots of useful information, including checklists, tips and resources, to help you in the event of a disaster, with an emphasis on preserving and recovering your important records and treasures.

Ready Georgia, the statewide dimension of Ready America
Aimed at motivating Georgians to take action to prepare for a disaster.

Flood Recovery Booklet from the Northeast Iowa Library Service Area
Comprehensive information for the public from evacuation through recovery.

Saving Nebraska’s Treasures, from NET, Nebraska’s PBS & NPR Stations
Great site with general preservation tips and videos.

Home Movie Recovery, from AMIA (Association of Moving Image Archivists) Hurricane Relief
What to do about your home movie damage

Disaster Resources for the Public, part of Heritage Emergency National Task Force
A website with disaster resources for the public in case of hurricane