The time to think about protecting your art collection is not when high winds are propelling a raging wildfire toward your community. Just as museums prepare for natural disasters, so should private collectors who live in areas vulnerable to wildfires, hurricanes and earthquakes.
Failing to plan for an emergency is the number one mistake collectors make, and it’s an understandable one. Your home is very personal, and it’s hard to contemplate that it could be badly damaged or destroyed. But if you don’t develop a plan, you could find yourself making hasty decisions ahead of an evacuation. If you can’t take everything, know which possessions—both artwork and sentimental belongings—you most want to save. It’s hard to think clearly when disaster is upon you. Your evacuation process will move faster if you have developed a strategy.
To prepare for an unexpected natural event, you should consider the following:
• Make a video of your collection. Hopefully, you’ll never need it, but fires can be especially devastating. If you can show your insurance company a video of your collection inside your home, it will help the insurance company process your claim more quickly.
• Reserve space in a fine arts storage warehouse, ideally a warehouse with staff trained to handle fragile artwork. These facilities, which charge a monthly rent to reserve your space, tend to be located in cities.
• Find out how long it would take the warehouse to get a truck to your residence and how much time would be needed to carefully pack and ship your artwork.
• Think about what you should do in the event a fire or flood moves into your area. Wind makes a fire situation ever-changing and you may need to evacuate sooner rather than later. Your personal safety comes first. Should you be faced with the need to evacuate as soon as possible and it is safe to do so, pack as much of your collection as possible into your car and hope for the best. If you’ve planned for an emergency evacuation ahead of time, you will have prioritized what pieces are most valuable to you.
• Maintain lush, green landscapes around on your property, particularly if you are the owner of a large, high value collection. Consult with landscapers and fine arts specialists about the types of vegetation that best impede a fire’s progress.
• Some homeowner insurance companies provide a service to have your home sprayed with fire retardant materials to prevent the house from burning. Find out if the service is available for you. These companies use GPS systems to monitor the locations and direction of wildfires and are able to gauge how long it would take for them to safely reach a home and treat it with retardant sprays.
• Consider building a “safe” room or plan what artwork might fit into your home safe. In one recent case, a homeowner’s house was destroyed, but valuable prints stored in the family safe survived the fire with only minor damage.
• Keep windows closed and block up outside air vents. Not all collectors have the resources to contract with storage facilities or fire retardant contractors, but taking obvious precautions are essential. Smoke damage can be treatable. Insurance companies much prefer claims for smoke damage repair to claims for total loss of the artwork.
How Museums Prepare For Disaster
When wildfires were approaching the Getty Center in December 2017, officials of this Los Angeles museum had no plan—or need—to evacuate its priceless collections. Why? Because when the museum was constructed about 20 years ago in the secluded Brentwood section, its designers planned for the eventuality of wildfires. The building is made of travertine stone and metal panels. Its landscaping is arranged so that the plants with the highest water content surround the museum, and brush is cleared regularly from the property. A million-gallon reserve water tank is on site.
While not every museum has the resources of the Getty Center, every museum does have a responsibility to develop their own emergency evacuation plan. Because no two museums are exactly alike, each plan is different.
Most museums are located in cities where concrete makes fires less likely to spread, so disaster plans—at least in California—are more likely focused on earthquakes. It is the responsibility of museum registrars and handlers to execute the plan. To protect the art in an emergency, some leave their homes and stay at the museum. Whether a museum is more likely to be struck by a hurricane, a wildfire, an earthquake or terrorism event, the plan is what is most important. Museum management must review the plan regularly and keep it up-to-date, as well as run related drills.
Role Of Insurance Brokers
In the event of a natural disaster, clients should communicate with their insurance brokers. By providing clients with cell phone numbers and claims information, it makes it easy for them to contact their broker with questions. At Huntington T. Block, we try to be in touch with our clients as much as we can before an emergency and then follow up with them afterward.
The past year was a particularly bad one for natural disasters in the United States. If there is one thing many of us learned in 2017, it is that disaster CAN happen and we need a plan to confront calamity should it come calling.
Diane Jackson is chief operating officer and director of finance at Huntington T. Block Insurance Agency Inc., a division of Aon, the world’s premier insurance broker.
