The Bluecoat fire threatened to be the biggest disaster of Liverpool's Culture Year. Laura Davis meets the team who helped save the day

AS FIREFIGHTERS battled the flames that threatened to engulf the 18th-century building, an emergency service of a different sort received the call to arms.

Losing the Bluecoat Arts Centre, just two months after a £12.5m refurbishment, would have been a devastating blow to Liverpool, particularly in Capital of Culture Year.

But once the Grade I-listed building was declared structurally safe, and the damage limited to a small area of one wing, there were other culturally significant items to worry about.

Hundreds of books, archives, old photographs and papers that told of the Bluecoat's, and therefore the city's, history were damaged by smoke and by water from the firefighters' hoses.

But, within minutes, the disaster recovery team from National Museums Liverpool was ready to prevent it becoming permanent.

Ironically, Sally Ann Yates, director of collections management at the Conservation Centre, was just about to start teaching a session on disaster recovery when she heard of the incident.

"I had forgotten some papers, so I went back to my office to pick them up and the phone rang," she explains.

With four large trolleys of emergency equipment – everything from mops and buckets to blotting paper – kept permanently in the Centre's loading bay, it didn't take long for the team to roll them into a van and drive to the Bluecoat.

"By the time we got there, the Fire Service had got the flames under control," recalls Sally Ann.

"Books, photographs and papers were being brought down from the area above the restaurant, where the fire had started. It was a lovely sunny day so we were able to work in the courtyard."

The team packed up all the affected items and took them back to the Conservation Centre, where they worked all night to limit the damage.

"We set up an operations room and started to dry out the damaged material," explains Sally Ann.

"We washed all the photos that had soot on them or any dirty water."

It took another week or so for the team to ensure everything was dry – placing blotting paper between every page of each book to ensure there was no irrecoverable damage.

"We had to make a judgment, because if you have paper that's very wet and you have more of it than you can handle quickly, the best thing to do is to freeze it. It literally freezes the damage in time until you have the time to defrost it and dry it in a controlled way," says Sally Ann.

"Fortunately, everything that came here ended up fine and totally useable.

“It was as successful an emergency response as we could have hoped for, but it helped that staff at the Bluecoat were so well organised. I was really impressed by that."

As well as always being prepared to respond to a disaster in one of its own venues across Merseyside, NML has an informal agreement with other arts organisations in the area that it will help in the advent of an emergency.

Sally Ann runs a series of training sessions on preparing for disaster recovery for NML staff, members of Merseyside Fire Service and people working for other arts organisations.

NML first drew up an emergency preparedness plan for its own collections in 1994, which includes keeping a call-out list of staff members prepared to respond to an emergency outside working hours.

The trolley-loads of supplies that are kept in the loading bay were bought in the mid-90s.

Fortunately, Sally Ann has never had to co-ordinate a major rescue operation of any of NML's collections, but she is ready should a terrible disaster occur.

In the event of a fire in the Walker Art Gallery, she explains, the team would have to await permission from the Fire Service before entering the building to tackle any damage.

"Every emergency is different," she says. "If the Fire Service determines the building is safe for us to go into, then we would get members of the handling staff to help us move the collections.

"We would work out which objects should be moved or protected – some of them would be too difficult or too heavy to move of course, but there's an awful lot you can do by simply throwing a sheet of polythene over a sculpture, protecting it from moisture in the air.

"It's often the water that can cause the most damage, because it gets everywhere, but as a conservationist I know I would rather have water damage to deal with than fire damage."

It has taken many hours over many years to ensure that the disaster recovery team is ready to leap into action.

Yet they all hope that their hard work will never have to be put into use.

lauradavis