Jennifer Fippinger

Hurricanes and Historic House Museums - Disaster Planning Jennifer Fippinger

Disaster preparedness plans play a significant role in protecting historic structures during a hurricane situation. In recent years an increasing number of hurricanes and tropical storms hit Florida, as well as the United States? Atlantic and Gulf Coasts. During the past five years storms such as Katrina and Ivan decimated coastal cities and towns. Such destruction cost people their livelihoods, their homes, and, in the worst cases, their lives. In the museum and historic preservation communities, the toll of these storms has been particularly significant. As a result of hurricanes, every state along the eastern coast from Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, to Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina lost historical structures. Informal accounts suggested that museum size and funding had a major impact on hurricane disaster preparedness procedures that each institution employs. This research set out to discover how size variables influenced the disaster preparedness plans of museums and to propose common guidelines that could be used for historic house museums of a variety of sizes.