The Library Leadership Network Commons

The End of My Summer Vacation

by Tom McNally
published September 14,2005

I don’t like to take long vacations.  Coming back to the accumulated workload is too painful.  It’s easier to take a Friday here and there.  But once a year in the summer, I have to visit my sisters and that means a week away.

This week I came home from the summer sisters visit on a Friday night.  That gave me the weekend to do the yard and maybe get in a round of golf.  I spent all day Saturday in the yard and was feeling fairly satisfied with my work.  I made myself a cocktail and my wife and I were deciding what we were going to grill.  A Prairie Home Companion was just coming on the radio when the phone rang.  The caller ID display had room for just one word…”University”.       

It’s the call that makes my blood run cold.  It’s the call that means trouble.  I live about 20 miles away from the University on a golf course.  We had a little rain that night, but at the University the skies had opened up.  They needed me and I knew my vacation had just ended.

By the time I got to the University area, the police had blocked off flooded areas and I had to detour around to get to the Library.  Once in the building, I went to Circulation and got a walkie-talkie to see where the problems were.  I met the Head of the Circulation Department on the east side of the building. 

The report was that a drain in a mechanical room had overflowed and the water had run down the building through the electrical rooms.  This was a fairly routine occurrence.  We had about ten people in the building working on the cleanup.  I called the police to see if there was any University help available.  The police said twenty buildings were flooded and that we were not going to get help any time soon.  I was OK with the situation.  My best guess was that we could get the water up and I would be home for the News from Lake Woebegone.

That was when our Government Documents librarian called in on my walkie-talkie.  He had water on the west side of the building.  I left the troops to their cleanup and went to investigate.  Our Government Documents guy took me to an area where there was water in a hallway.  The problem was that the water was moving across the floor and moving fast.  We followed the water to an exterior door.

The door that we were standing in front of led to a sloped driveway.  The driveway started at ground level and ended at the door we were about to open about one story below grade.  The sides of the driveway were brick and now held about 10,000 gallons of water.  We pushed on the door and were nearly knocked down by the flow of water.  The door slammed shut.

We went outside and looked at the swimming pool that the driveway had become.  We decided to take our shoes off, wade into the water and try to open the clogged drain that was causing this problem.  I got on the walkie-talkie and alerted the team that we had a bigger problem in my area and that we needed immediate help. 

The next words I heard on the walkie-talkie were, “The water on the west side of the building is pouring onto a transformer.  Get out of the driveway now!  You are in danger of electrocution.  Everyone evacuate the building.  The transformer can blow at any minute.”  So much for the News from Lake Woebegone.

The story has a happy ending.  The police came over and saw the problem.  The officer looked at the water pouring onto the transformer and said, “Holy sh__!”  That sort of response means that they are going to get some help for you.  We shortly had a team with pumps and they worked until midnight to clear the water.  The next day Donnie from Roto-Rooter came out and cleared the drain.  Donnie came back a few days later and really blasted the drain and now we are feeling pretty safe about that area.

The point of my story is that disasters happen.  If you don’t have a disaster team, get one.  Once you have one, give them money to buy supplies and the opportunity and encouragement to train.  A disaster team cannot be one of those groups that meets, develops a plan and then everybody moves on.  A disaster plan is fine, but if your team does not train continuously, it’s like a football playbook with no one to run the plays. 

Don’t micromanage them.  Give them power and authority.  Rotate the head of the group on a regular basis.  That way no one is identified as the authority on what to do.  Every member of the team has got to feel that if they are the first on the scene that they have the authority to take charge, make decision and take action.  We had a flood one night and the supervisor was brand new, but one of the first items in her training was disaster response.  Her quick decision that night saved thousands of books that would have been lost.

Develop a call list.  Make it twice as many people as you need.  You never know how many people are going to be home when you call.  Make sure the police have lots of people they can call.  If an officer is responding to an alarm in the middle of the night, they must be able to reach someone who can put your disaster team into action.  Think ahead if there might be times when all the key people are going to be away for the weekend.  The disaster team is useless if it cannot be called into action.

Finally, one last caution: Don’t get cocky and wade into waist deep water.  I could have gotten myself and one of my librarians killed that night.  If it’s a problem you have trained for, take care of it.  If it isn’t, call Donnie the Rotor-Rooter guy.  He will know what to do. 


Tom McNally is the Director of the Thomas Cooper Library, University of South Carolina

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