CUSTOMER SUCCESS

From Disaster to Recovery: A City Rescues its Historical Records

Discover how the city of Kenner, LA, rescued its historical records from the brink of destruction when Hurricane Ida threatened to erase centuries of documented history.

(Photo by Brett Duke, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate)

Overview

In the wake of Hurricane Ida, the City of Kenner, Louisiana faced a daunting recovery process. One of the most difficult challenges was dealing with the City's historical record collections. During the storm, the brutal winds caused significant damage to multiple buildings, including City Hall, exposing decades’ worth of irreplaceable documents to the destructive elements.

The storm's fury left countless vital city documents teetering on the edge of permanent loss. The records that captured the city's rich history data were saturated by rain and on the verge of irreparable damage.

What followed was a test of resilience and a demonstration of the city's commitment to preserving its history. The city embarked on a substantial project to salvage, restore, and digitize these documents, ensuring the preservation of its heritage and the continued functioning of its key departments, even in the face of a devastating natural disaster.

Following the devastating impact of Hurricane Ida, Revolution Data Systems (RDS) was contracted to undertake a substantial remediation and scanning project for the city. The City tasked RDS with recovering, remediating, and digitizing several historical records collections. The collections included documents from the Mayor's Office, the Planning Department, and the Clerk of Court.

Recovering and Restoring the Storm-damaged Records

The records were carefully inventoried, boxed, and transported by RDS to their service bureau located in Abita Springs, LA. The documents were segregated into wet and dry documents.

The storm-damaged records were carefully dried and restored through a document remediation process. The documents were freeze-dried to prevent any additional damage, and cleaned to remove any dirt or debris. This process restored the documents to a condition suitable for digitization, preserving their content despite the water damage they had suffered.

Simultaneously, efforts were turned toward the dry records. The process of converting these records into a digital format started right away. The dual approach allowed the city to manage the situation effectively, navigating the preservation of its records with urgency and precision.

Collection Breakdown and Scanning Process

The collection included about 900 boxes across the three offices. Preparation of each document for scanning involved removing staples, paper clips, and binder clips, ensuring the documents were free of obstructions.

All documents were scanned at a resolution of 300 DPI and saved as TIFF images. This process ensured the creation of high-quality digital replicas of the original documents, thus preserving their clarity and detail for future use. To ensure the comprehensive digitization of all pages, a rigorous double-blind quality control process was put into action. This method provided an additional layer of scrutiny, ensuring no pages were overlooked during the scanning process.

Indexing and Document Re-housing

The indexing process ran concurrently with scanning to allow easy retrieval of the digitized records. Indexing the documents was a far cry from a normal project. Instead of dealing with neatly organized files, the team had to navigate through piles of waterlogged, crumbling papers that were often out of order, covered in debris, or fused together due to moisture. Each document had to be handled with extreme care during the restoration process, and their condition added layers of complexity to the indexing.

What would typically be a straightforward process of identifying and categorizing records turned into a meticulous and delicate operation. The team not only had to decipher damaged pages but also cross-reference incomplete information to accurately index the records. This painstaking effort ensured that Kenner's historical documents, threatened by permanent loss, were carefully restored and preserved for the future.

The extraordinary nature of the situation demanded specialized expertise and a flexible approach to ensure that every critical piece of information was recovered and properly indexed, making this project stand out from normal indexing tasks.

After the scanning and indexing process, the documents were re-housed into new folders. They were re-stapled or bound with binder clips, preserving the original order, and maintaining the integrity and continuity of the city's historical archives.

Conclusion

Upon completion, the records were delivered to the City of Kenner, ensuring that the city's invaluable historical records were not only preserved but also made easily accessible for future generations.

This project serves as a testament to Revolution Data Systems' expertise in managing complex document recovery and digitization efforts, even in the most challenging post-disaster situations. As a Louisiana-based company, we bring deep experience in hurricane recovery, coupled with a unique understanding of local needs, allowing us to navigate these critical projects with precision and care.

If your office is in need of document scanning, restoration, or disaster recovery services, please don’t hesitate to reach out. We’re here to help safeguard your vital records.