[Nhcoll-l] Update on Torrey Hall and the Pringle Herbarium after the August 3 fire

Sat Aug 12 11:24:56 EDT 2017

Dear Dorothy,

I think we all appreciate your update; this diary-form is a helpful 
format to follow your decision making process.

Thanks for sharing and keeping us updated (wishing you every possible 
success for the tasks ahead)!
Dirk

Am 12.08.2017 um 16:54 schrieb Dorothy Allard:
> Hello everyone
>
> It has been nine days since the fire in Torrey Hall that affected the 
> Pringle Herbarium and the mammal and arthropod collections that 
> together comprise our natural history museum.
>
> The first three days (Friday-Sunday) were occupied by removing 
> water-damaged materials, including some accessioned lichens and some 
> unaccessioned vascular plant specimens, preparing them for freezing, 
> and freezing them. We got good advice and help from our library 
> Special Collections staff, who gave us two Disaster Kits that they had 
> prepared in case something like this affected their collections, but 
> which were very useful for us as well. Through the internet, we also 
> learned about Harvard Herbarium's experience with a water damage episode.
>
> In those three days, numerous volunteers came together to move stuff 
> and do the freezing prep. We threw out some wet stuff that was too far 
> gone to save, or that was identified as second priority. It was a 
> complicated and chaotic scene, since there were two different 
> construction crews on site (one that was working on an adjacent 
> building), the water damage specialists, university physical plant 
> people, the biologists, and the volunteers.
>
> Also, by the end of the weekend, the water damage specialists had 
> cleaned out all of the wet ceiling tile and placed huge ventilation 
> tubes throughout the building to dry it out.  A lot of hard work by a 
> lot of people made this happen quickly.
>
> It took from Monday to Friday to move the herbarium cabinets out of 
> Torrey and across campus to Jeffords Hall, the Plant Biology and Plant 
> and Soil Sciences building. Dave Barrington and our Physical Plant 
> people orchestrated the move, with a lot of help from Hilda White and 
> Eunice Froeliger, volunteers who work in the herbarium. Hilda and 
> Eunice had the difficult job of figuring out the placement of 200 or 
> so cabinets on two different floors and in several different rooms in 
> Jeffords, mainly in the basement, in a way that the cabinets could 
> still be accessed and be distributed in roughly the right order. They 
> made it happen. We hired two giant cranes, one at Torrey to remove the 
> cabinets through a hole in the roof or out windows and place them on a 
> moving truck, one to take the cabinets off the trucks and put them 
> into Jeffords. They were removed with their contents inside, since the 
> specimens were mainly unaffected by the fire or water. Some of the 
> cabinets had to be tipped on their side in order to go on the elevator 
> in Jeffords, and we found that if tipped only on their left side (the 
> fold side of the genus folders), the specimens remained intact. 
> Specimens in packets had to be boxed before the cabinets were moved.
>
> The frozen materials that we saved are being shipped to a special 
> facility in Massachusetts for freeze-drying. All of the rest of the 
> contents of Torrey has been, or is being, removed, cleaned, and stored 
> in Jeffords.  We are now setting up temporary operating space for the 
> herbarium and the digitization lab there. There are mountains of boxes 
> to go through and reorganize. The interior of Torrey will be gutted 
> and completely renovated; the exterior was in the process of 
> restoration at the time of the fire and that will continue. The whole 
> thing is expected to take 18-24 months.
>
> I thought that you all would appreciate an update.
>
>
> Dorothy J. Allard
> Pringle Herbarium
> Plant Biology
> University of Vermont
>
>
>
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-- 
Dirk Neumann

Tel: 089 / 8107-111
Fax: 089 / 8107-300
email: Dirk.Neumann(a)zsm.mwn.de

Postanschrift:

Staatliche Naturwissenschaftliche Sammlungen Bayerns
Zoologische Staatssammlung München
Dirk Neumann, Sektion Ichthyologie / DNA-Storage
Münchhausenstr. 21
81247 München

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---------

Dirk Neumann

Tel: +49-89-8107-111
Fax: +49-89-8107-300
email: Dirk.Neumann(a)zsm.mwn.de

postal address:

Bavarian Natural History Collections
The Bavarian State Collection of Zoology
Dirk Neumann, Section Ichthyology / DNA-Storage
Muenchhausenstr. 21
81247 Munich (Germany)

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