When a flash flood took out the basement of the University of Hawaii at Manoa Library (UHML) in October 2004, a disaster plan had been in place for ten years and was being regularly reviewed and updated. So you'd think UHML would have had most of its bases covered. Although the preservation department successfully recovered much of the collection, the significant damage to service was unanticipated. Sixty staff work areas were destroyed and had to be relocated, and the staff had to shelve books in the dark for three months owing to the loss of electricity. The library's longstanding and routinely rehearsed disaster plan hadn't accounted for this great a blow to library service and function.
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