Posted on 11/03/2005 7:29:26 AM PST by WestTexasWend
PASS CHRISTIAN, Miss. (AP) - As Hurricane Katrina approached, local historians were confident a vault filled with precious pre-Civil War pictures, maps and documents cataloguing the history of this Gulf Coast community would be safe.
Hopes were high after the storm passed. The former bank building that served as the Pass Christian Historical Society headquarters washed away, but its vault still stood. Workers opened it to find wet, sopping papers - the ruined history of a seaside town. Most of the collection including town ledgers and old newspapers is lost.
"Apparently, the vault did not hold back water," said Lou Rizzardi, an alderman and historical society member in the town of 6,750. "So it penetrated. Things got damaged because of water."
All up and down the Mississippi Gulf Coast and into New Orleans, archivists and local historians are taking stock. They're worried about the future, but wondering also, what do they have left of their past after Katrina's 145 mph winds and a massive storm surge on Aug. 29 splintered many communities and left others waterlogged.
Many are considering whether it is wise to keep such valuable documents in disaster-prone areas. Elsewhere in Mississippi and New Orleans, archivists swooped in as soon as they could after Katrina to rescue documents, sending them in refrigerated vans to special labs for restoration.
Just a few miles west of Pass Christian, the Hancock County Historical Society in Bay St. Louis fared much better with very little water damage and a vault that held, protecting thousands of documents, including family diaries and thousands of local photographs.
Charles Harry Gray, the executive director, was prepared in case disaster struck. Over the years he had been making copies of all of the group's most treasured documents, including 30,000 pictures. Not one single photograph or record was lost.
They are the pieces of Bay St. Louis' 306-year history that made the town of 8,230 what it is today, he said. Many of the copies were on computer disks and hard drives, others were sent to the University of Southern Mississippi, two hours north in Hattiesburg.
"It is imperative that you have copies in other locations because you never know what's going to happen, what the next catastrophe is going to be, and there certainly will be one," Gray said.
There were no copies in Pass Christian. Rizzardi said the hope for the town's past lies with a local plumber, Billy Bourdin, who kept 3,400 vintage pictures on computer disks as a hobby.
The actual photographs and his eight piles of newspaper clippings are gone, Bourdin said, but the disks survived.
"Stayed on the desk shelf during the storm. So far they've meant very little. Maybe they'll mean a little more now," said Bourdin, who displayed many pictures at his Bourdin Brothers plumbing shop downtown, a two-story brick building whose first floor was gutted by the storm.
MS ping
Anyone who appreciates the study of the WBTS cannot help but feel the pain of this one. Damn.
Wouldn't you think they would have tested the vault's ability to protect its contents against such a likely challenge?
I never cease to be amazed at how poorly a lot of public officials perform at their job. Almost every emergency situation reveals just how little we're getting for our taxes when it comes to public employees and officials.
Backup is not just for computer files.
Sad. Pass Christian is my favorite place in the US. We were even thinking of relocating there.
My favorite remembrance was my first stop there. We dropped into a little shop (a victorian, I think) that also served coffee. It evidently was a town gathering place. We met a fellow who was a multi-generational resident of PC. He took time to tell us about the history of PC and some of the lore. He also told us about some of the houses that lined the main street along the gulf. In his soft, sophisticated southern accent he said, with a wry smile, "'Course you know that every 10-15 years or so, we change the architecture of our little village."
I wish I remembered his name, and I hope he fared better than the archives.
Many bank vaults and associated strongbox areas are very poor places for items that could be affected by climate conditions. Some, particularly in the South, do not even have 24 hour full-time air-conditioning in the storage area.
There are methods of conserving documents after something like this (one process involves freeze-drying) but they may have waited too late.
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