Try one of these exercises for testing your disaster plan and improving your institution's ability to respond to an emergency situation.

1. Preservation Quick Tips:
Test your Disaster Plan
Annie Peterson, LYRASIS Preservation Services Librarian

2. lyrasis.org
Testing your disaster plan
So you wrote your disaster plan, now what? Test your
plan!
Try these exercises for testing your disaster plan:
Phone tree drill
Fire drill
Tabletop exercise
Hands-on recovery

3. lyrasis.org
Phone tree drill
• Activate the phone tree in your disaster plan
• Communicate a test message through the whole tree
• Check with staff after the drill to ensure the message was
received
• Update your communications plan to include anyone who did
not receive the message
• Consider including text messaging into your communication,
it can be more reliable than voice communication in regional
disasters

4. lyrasis.org
Fire drill
• Conduct a fire drill while staff, researchers, visitors are in
your institution to get the most realistic sense of an actual fire
or evacuation that could happen at any time
• Practice before the real thing
• Improve procedures for evacuation for any reason, not just
fire
• Ensure that all procedures for accounting for all staff in an
evacuation are in place and followed

5. lyrasis.org
Tabletop exercise
• Gather stakeholders in disaster plan
• Administration
• Emergency responders (or someone to represent emergency
responders like police, fire)
• Facilities
• Staff from all levels
• Others that have a role in your disaster plan
• Create an imaginary disaster scenario
• Hurricane
• Earthquake
• Tornado
• Whatever is most likely regional event in your area
• Or focus on local event such as sprinkler malfunction, or plumbing leak

6. lyrasis.org
Tabletop exercise
• Walk through the first event of the emergency situation
• i.e. tornado watch is issued for your area
• Ask everyone around the table to respond with what they are
doing at that point
• i.e. communicating to patrons where to seek shelter
• Walk through all the subsequent steps of the incident, asking
participants how they are responding throughout, following
the disaster plan
• Tornado hits, building damaged, collections affected, recovery process

7. lyrasis.org
Tabletop exercise
• Sample exercises from National Network Libraries of
Medicine (NN/LM)
• http://nnlm.gov/ep/table-top-exercises/
• FEMA Emergency Planning Exercises
• https://www.fema.gov/emergency-planning-exercises
• PrepareAthon! Flood exercise, FEMA
• http://www.fema.gov/media-library/resources-
documents/collections/372

8. lyrasis.org
Hands-on disaster recovery
• Participate in or organize a hands-on disaster recovery
workshop
• Hands-on workshops allow participants to work with wet
materials to understand how books, papers, photographs,
objects, or other cultural heritage collections behave when
they are wet
• Materials what will be discarded anyways are used, and
participants can practice recovery before using any
techniques on important collections in a real emergency

9. lyrasis.org
Hands-on disaster recovery
• Use your disaster plan to guide your hands-on recovery in
the exercise
• Discover what’s missing from your plan, what additional information
you needed in the recovery process
• Determine what supplies would improve the recovery process and
improve your disaster supplies
• Look for a workshop in your area, or get in touch with
LYRASIS at preservation@lyrasis.org to talk about
organizing a workshop

10. lyrasis.org
Conclusion
• Debrief with key players after training exercises or real
disaster event
• Revisit your plan after training or a real event to ensure it has
been updated according to what you learned
• These are just some of the ways that you might prepare your
institution to respond to an emergency situation. Drills for
other types of incidents beyond fire, instruction sessions,
hands-on training, and coordinating and learning fro local
emergency managers are all additional approaches to
consider.

11. lyrasis.org
Resources
• LYRASIS Disaster Resources
• https://www.lyrasis.org/LYRASIS%20Digital/Pages/Preservation%20Services/Disaster-
Resources.aspx
• Disaster plan templates, Society of American Archivists
• http://www2.archivists.org/initiatives/mayday-saving-our-archives/annotated-
resources#templates
• Developing a Disaster Preparedness / Emergency Response Plan,
American Alliance of Museums
• http://www.aam-us.org/docs/default-source/continuum/developing-a-disaster-
plan-final.pdf?sfvrsn=4
• “Building an Emergency Plan: A Guide for Museums and Other Cultural
Institutions”
• https://www.getty.edu/conservation/publications_resources/pdf_publications/pdf/emergen
cy_plan.pdf
• Sample disaster plans, Conservation online
• http://cool.conservation-us.org/bytopic/disasters/plans/

12. Questions?
ContactAnnie Peterson, LYRASIS
Preservation Services Librarian
Phone 678 235 2923
Email annie.peterson@lyrasis.org
lyrdigpres lyrasis