Fackerell, Reita

English

OJS at Oregondigital.org (Oregon State University / University of Oregon)

OLA Quarterly Volume 14 Number 4 Emergency and Disaster Preparedness and Response (Winter 2008) July 2014 So you think you are ready for a disaster? Don't be so sure…: Learning from the Seaside Public Library Experience Reita Fackerell Seaside Public Library Recommended Citation Fackerell, R. (2014). So you think you are ready for a disaster? Don't be so sure…: Learning from the Seaside Public Library Experience. OLA Quarterly, 14(4), 15-16. http://dx.doi.org/10.7710/1093-7374.1222 © 2014 by the author(s). OLA Quarterly is an official publication of the Oregon Library Association | ISSN 1093-7374  15At the Seaside Public Library we are aware of the potential for natural and man-made disasters in our community and have planned accordingly. We have planned for earthquakes. We have planned for tsunamis. We have planned for spring	break	“disturbances,”	better	known	as riots (a term flatly discouraged by the city). We have mapped out evacuation routes to escape any ninety foot tsunami wave o’ horror approaching from the west. We have pinpointed sites for emergency community cache barrels full of bottled water, blankets and energy bars. And yes, we have actually taste tested the aforesaid energy bars to make sure they are palatable and nutritious.The entire town has participated in annual evacuation drills, marching to get to high ground in the allotted twenty minutes assuming, of course, we are not swallowed up like houseflies in the lique-faction process. We have created emer-gency command centers and all of us have NOAA weather radios. Most of us carry emergency packs in our cars, and a few who are really smug, have life jackets in their trunks. You’d think we were ready for anything, but you’d be wrong. Why? Because over the last five years of all this planning for any eventuality, one thing remains true: the emergency that happens is	not	the	emergency	you	expected.Take, for instance, the big windstorm of	December	2007.	This	storm	was	actu-ally a series of three storms hitting Oregon and Washington, bringing winds, bigger winds, and finally hurricane force winds that seemed eternal. Huge swaths of forest blew down over most roads and cut Seaside off from the rest of the world. There were so many trees down that the entire area resembled the Siberian Tunguska event. If that wasn’t enough, landslides and flooding turned local communities into mosh pits of mud and slime. We had no power; we had no communication. Phone and Internet service was down, cell towers were inoper-able, satellite phones did not work.  We were told it would be five days until power was restored. This was an emergency, to be sure, but not the earthquake or tsunami we	expected.	At	least	once	a	month	I	had	mentally pictured myself springing into ac-tion at the first sound of the tsunami siren to disconnect the library server (Save the Server!) and running with it up to higher ground. Once there I planned to lounge around in the fancy neighborhoods on the hilltops, noshing on energy bars and lying in the sun on my emergency blanket, wait-ing for NBC, CBS, or CNN to come for an interview.This was not the emergency I had planned for. No, this was December, and this was the coast. It was cold, and it was only light for about forty minutes a day. Those of us who were not needed to cut up fallen timber, put out chimney fires, or save the neighbor’s cat from a tree still wanted to do something. So we did what any one who wanted to help our ravaged com-munity would do. We opened the library. The	library	was	freezing	cold.	Any	dress	code (and I say that loosely, after all, this is Seaside), was thrown out the window.  We came to work in boots, woolens hats, gloves, coats and scarves. We kept them on all day, but never did get warm. The library was dark and damp to the point that we half	expected	bats	to	fly	out	from	the	599.4	section at any moment. We moved our So you think you are ready  for a disaster? Don’t be so sure…Learning from the Seaside Public Library Experienceby Reita FackerellLibrary Director, Seaside Public Library 16base of operations around to the only south facing window in the building, so that we could see what we were doing.Because we were one more dark building in a county of dark buildings, we made	an	“Open”	sign	and	put	it	out	on	the	library	lawn.	We	did	not	really	expect	any patrons. After all, who would leave the safety of  home, drive around downed power lines, under trees leaning over the road and through knee deep water to come to a library?Lots of people, it turned out. We had our regular readers, but then, we got a whole new set, because when you have no cable, no Internet, no video games, and no phone service, what do you want to do? Read!We gave flashlights to patrons who wanted to browse the stacks. Sometimes, the staff held the flashlights for our patrons so they could browse easier. We wrote down barcodes and patron numbers and book requests, and for the first time in years, we had no disputes over the In-ternet.  We did everything we normally do,	except	we	were	bundled	up	like	polar	nomads. Did I mention that five days with-out hot showers, hair dryers, and getting dressed in the dark gave the staff a certain ambiance, but our patrons did not seem to mind in the least. They looked the same. It was	a	bonding	experience.The entire community came together. The fire station, having an emergency diesel generator, provided hot coffee to all depart-ments. Portable generators were donated to	local	organizations	and	local	restaurants	donated all the rapidly thawing food in their	freezers	to	organizations	who	provided	hot meals to everyone. Then people started bringing food to the library. It was like a party, albeit one in the eternal dusk of the Siberian tundra. Patrons started to hang out, whether to read, chat or listen to the emergency radio that we had (hooray for di-saster planning!). Everyone crowded around the one south window, as that was the only one with enough light to read by, and some of us got very up close and personal. Who needs Match.com when you have a situation like this? It almost became fun, if you	forgot	that	you	were	freezing,	couldn’t	see much, looked like offal, and probably smelled worse.We kept the library open for four days without power. To be sure, we weren’t heroes. That status went to the fire, police, public works, power company personnel and ham radio operators. And although we were not totally prepared for the event, there was not much we would have done differently. We had our emergency radio, flashlights, and wool socks. We had books. We were open.O R E G O N  L I B R A R Y  A S S O C I A T I O N

So you think you are ready for a disaster? Don't be so sure…: Learning from the Seaside Public Library Experience

https://journals.oregondigital.org/olaq/article/download/vol14_iss4_7/615

So you think you are ready for a disaster? Don't be so sure…: Learning from the Seaside Public Library Experience

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