National Archive

Restoration of Documents at Cayman Islands National Archive

On 12th September 2004 Hurricane Ivan, one of the worst ever hurricanes in the Caribbean, struck the Cayman Islands which were buffeted by tropical force winds for over 36 hours and by hurricane winds for more than 13 hours. The combination of high winds and low pressure created a tidal wave that washed across the island and for a time Grand Cayman disappeared off satellite pictures.

It would be fair to say that no one in the Cayman Islands was prepared for the scale of the disaster and the devastation caused by the tidal wave. BELFOR responded immediately and used the appropriate resources from around the world to meet the needs of the Cayman Island Government.

At the height of the hurricane, and with flood waters rising, the Cayman Island National Archive (CINA) staff worked through the night. The Archive had activated its disaster recovery plan, but their efforts were in vain as no one could have anticipated the devastation the enormous tidal wave would wreak.

CINA’s first concern was for the recovery of its records. This could be broken up into two groups;
• Records they normally store for government departments
• Vital records that had been brought to the Archive to be secured during the hurricane.

About half of the vital records, held in 187 boxes, had been saturated. They included;
• Cabinet minutes
• Chief Secretary’s records
• Personnel files
• Ministerial files
• Passport and immigration documents
• Police files and so on.

It was vitally important that these records were restored as soon as possible as they effectively related to the running of the country.

An urgent request for help
BELFOR Canada contacted BELFOR UK as they required urgent assistance. The request was for the use of BELFOR UK’s large transportable document dryers and the expertise of BELFOR UK’s Senior Document Restorer, who was needed to get the machines set-up and running and start the drying out process.

The machines were needed straight away, so that the essential government files could be dried. However, the machines had to be converted to the local power supply and checked to make sure they would run in such humid conditions.

The machines arrived on Grand Cayman island on 30th November. However, the fastest route available was far from direct, going from Manchester to Amsterdam, and then Miami before reaching their final destination.

Nothing to declare
Getting the machines to the Cayman Islands was going to be the easy part, the first of many obstacles arose at Grand Cayman airport. BELFOR’s expert describes the situation they faced;
“The islands infrastructure was totally devastated, transportation, power and telecommunications failures made our progress painfully slow. Customs wouldn’t let us through as they had never seen machines like this before, finding a truck with a crane was a challenge and even then it took two days to locate a forklift to move the machines into the building! Strings had to be pulled so that we could get a telegraph pole put up and get power to the Archive. Two weeks after I arrived we were finally ready to start the drying.”

All in a days work
Local government staff were impressed with the speed of BELFOR’s work as even normal tasks were testing in these difficult circumstances. Working conditions were extremely tough however, the spirit of the Archive staff who worked alongside BELFOR was so strong they continued to turn up everyday, even though many of their homes had been completely destroyed. Staff from BELFOR also had to endure these very basic living conditions. The hotel where they stayed had actually been partially destroyed and had no running water or electricity

Due to the failure of the country’s infrastructure, access to the Cayman Islands was very limited and only approved contractors were being allowed entry. Other restoration contractors came and went but BELFOR were used throughout the island as the Government had confidence that the company were making things happen.

Restoration continues
Over 20 government departments had water damaged records and CINA was put in charge of the restoration of all government documents. These ranged from official court documents to minutes of government meetings and more continued to arrive from all over the island.

BELFOR Canada specially constructed a 40ft long thermal drying container to speed up the drying process. BELFOR UK’s vacuum drying machines remained in the Cayman Islands to restore documents from private businesses.

BELFOR responded immediately and used the appropriate resources from around the world to meet the needs of the Cayman Island Government. Transportation issues and difficult working conditions were all overcome to achieve a successful conclusion.

Dr. Philip Pedley, Director, Cayman Islands National Archive commented on BELFOR’s work;

“BELFOR UK responded rapidly to the request to supply vacuum freeze-dryers capable of treating some of the most vital records of the Cayman Islands government that were damaged in the storm. Their expert, who oversaw this project on behalf of BELFOR UK, did an excellent job in very challenging circumstances.”

Photographs courtesy of Cayman Islands National Archive.