The Japanese Earthquake makes our blood run cold for the devastation… but what does it teach us about our potential for a "situation" where we live? This article addresses a niche expertise that you will NOT FIND ANYWHERE ELSE and is of extreme importance. Keep in mind as you read this article that it focuses on protecting, preserving and saving property that is historically, financially and emotional important to households and businesses. We do not write about health and safety issues, building structural problems, economic matters etc.

What do you cherish and fear losing? Heirlooms, crystal, collectibles, family history, intellectual property? What items of value would impact your business continuity and how would these items, flying around in an earthquake, affect personal safety?!

Notice in the photos of the earthquake damage that you see on the news and or the Internet that not all homes, building etc are completely destroyed. In fact there is an epicenter that gets hit hard but even the buildings in the critical area get hit and missed. IT ALWAYS PAYS TO PREPARE in order to:

• Keep things from flying around in the air during the earthquake for personal safety

• Protect important historical items

• Save financially valuable items

• Protect and save emotionally valuable items

• Know ahead of time what will impact your business is you lose it.

Surprisingly, an easy, fast, do-it-yourself anchoring technique can save you in all of these five of these problem areas… BIG TIME!

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You should know about a national program in the US to help devasted areas hit by natural disasters:

In 2009, responding to floods in Ohio, The American Institute for Conservation (AIC) joined efforts with the Heritage Emergency National Task Force (a program of Heritage Preservation in Washington DC for more than a decade) to provide these emergency services. In times of disaster response, AIC offers assistance through phone calls, email messages, and websites postings. The AIC-CERT coordinator assembles members available to respond by phone or in person, and an AIC-CERT member volunteers to answer the 24-hour phone assistance line. In the past some of the services provided included:

• Creation of priority list for collections recovery

• Cleared a passage for safe and efficient collection removal and recovery.

• Priority collections were transported to a climate-controlled temporary storage site.

The volunteers were trained in basic treatment of materials, documentation of collections, and in safety issues in damaged buildings. Basic recovery materials suppliers were coordinated.

Even if we can imagine that items like artwork, heirlooms, crystal, collectibles, family history, intellectual property are crushed in an earthquake like Japan, you'll notice on the news massive damage due to fire/smoke and water (putting out fires and tsunamis).

Gordon Hendrickson, State Archivist at the State Historical Society of Iowa, notes that members of the AIC-CERT team were "there within days" and that their assistance was "really crucial".

The mission of AIC-CERT is to respond to the needs of cultural institutions during emergencies and disasters through coordinated efforts with first responders, state agencies, vendors and the public.

Many of America's cultural institutions are administered by volunteers or a single, full-time staff person. The Response Team will provide human resources and skills to these understaffed institution in a time of need through phone support, damage assessment, and help with salvage organization.

Scott M. Haskins (www.saveyourstufffromadisaster.com), AIC Professional Associate Member, disaster response expert and preservation specialist (www.preservationcoach.com) says, "The Rapid Responders, AIC-CERT,are made up of dedicated professional conservators with whom I could trust my most precious items. They provide a huge service, much needed during community response efforts."