The following was posted to AVECOL-L and is reposated here
with Dr. Hackett's explicit permission. Several people had
expressed concern off-list about the effects of a partial
power loss on the Field Museum's frozen tissue collections:
here is the definbitive answer. Please send off-list queries
directly to Dr. Hackett. sys


Forwarded from Shannon Hackett <[log in to unmask]>

Originally posted to  AVECOL-L <[log in to unmask]>

A number of people seem interested/concerned by a recent
power outage at the Field Museum.  Here is a little
information on this problem and our thoughts on how to
prepare for major problems.  Thanks to all who expressed
their concerns for our collections.  We look forward to
hearing additional solutions that others have come up with
for safeguarding these valuable collections.

First thing to note--we have a totally incompetent power
company and cannot expect good or regular power to the
building.

Here is what happened.  First and foremost, no collections
were damaged by the outage and in reality, our security and
facility planning staff did a great job alerting scientific
staff that the power was out (this has always been the case
for us).  As a result, no collections were really in
significant danger.  A number of people came in to help with
making sure things were kept at temperature.  This involved
buying dry ice as a precautionary measure, but more
importantly it involved running extension chords from parts
of the building with power to freezers and incubators in
areas without power.

The legacy of the event is that our facilities planning
staff were made
clearly aware that these collections had to be a priority
for emergency power.  This is something that has not been
appreciated. They have moved very quickly to identify the
freezers and other equipment that we consider critical.
Unlike our neighbor, the Shedd Aquarium, our museum does not
have a backup generator and we are unlikely to ever have one
for the entire museum.  We believe, however, that if there
were future power outages, which is not outside the realm of
possibilities, given what appears to be a very serious
situation with regard to the power grid maintained by Com Ed
in the Chicago area, we will have an emergency generator to
provide power to our collection freezers and other critical
equipment.  Beyond that it seems to us that the move being
made by our bird and mammal divisions to liquid nitrogen
storage provides best solution we can think of to avoid the
effects of future power outages on material stored at
ultra-cold temperatures (these tanks can simply be filled
with nitrogen manually if necessary and they hold
temperature much better than any freezer).

Here are some additional thoughts.

1.  Do you have a good relationship with the security people
for your areas?  Our security staff has been tremendous in
helping us avoid serious disasters (compressors going out, a
party organizer turning off the breaker to our ultracolds,
etc.).  They patrol our collection areas every few hours
during the night and know who to call and what to do in an
emergency.

2.  Do you have a plan in place in the event of any
problems?  Ours is taped to our freezers and on file in our
security office--detailed list of what to do, whom to call,
where to get dry ice, etc?

3.  We are also looking into installing a telephone dialup
system to alert a group of people in the event of
temperature changes in any of our vessels (we had one of
these at LSU).

4.  Do you have back-up power options?

5.  We have just installed a backup system with CO2 for some
of the freezers--you might want to check with the
manufacturer of your units to see if this is possible.

6.  We really like the liquid nitrogen facility we have set
up.  We store our tissues in vapour phase (3-5 inches of
liquid nitrogen in the bottom of the vessel and our
collections on a stainless steel platform on top of the
nitrogen).  We have tested this facility and it maintained a
temperature of -143 c for 5 days with no power or no
nitrogen going to the vessel.  We'll feel much better when
all the collection is in this vessel.  Freezers and
certainly our power appear less reliable.

7.  Use these problems to your advantage.  Because of the
concern over lost power and the state of our power company,
the local media have been tremendously involved in this.  A
Chicago Tribune reporter wrote an article on our collections
and the research programs of the Field Museum that made the
front page of the Tribune.  All the local news organizations
and the local PBS station have done reports on the research
and collections at the museum.  The PR has been great for
highlighting our research and collections to the Chicago
public.



Shannon



PLEASE NOTE MY NEW PHONE AND FAX NUMBERS
**************************************
* Shannon J. Hackett                 *
* Zoology Department/Bird Division   *
* Field Museum of Natural History    *
* Roosevelt Road at Lake Shore Drive *
* Chicago, IL  60605                 *
* ---------------------------------- *
* phone 312-665-7729                 *
* fax 312-665-7754                   *
* e-mail [log in to unmask]           *
**************************************

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