Dear List

As many of you must know, Hurricane Rita is headed for Southeast Texas and Louisiana. I write to document the event here and to enlist any good wishes or prayers that you can send our way. 

The McFaddin-Ward House executed its hurricane preparedness plan and now we must wait. 

At the last update, our staff is safe.

Whether your museum can expect hurricanes or other natural disasters, I encourage you to create an emergency preparedness plan and review it if you already have one. A couple of things that I will propose to add to our own plan (given our preparations day before yesterday) are as follows:

1) Ensure that all off display drawers, cabinets etc. are empty and available to accept objects in the event of a storm. Fortunately we had cleared all off display objects at the beginning of this year, which made our stowage of artifacts much easier.

2) Photograph rooms, storage cabinets etc. so that our preparations and the condition of artifacts could be proven for insurance purposes.

3) I produced a status report with photos and emailed it to my director, assistant director and assistant curator before I evacuated.

I am sure that I will have many other suggestions once this process is over. 

Wish us luck!

Sincerely,
Ware Petznick
Curator of Collections
McFaddin-Ward House

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