How it works · Hurricane Procedure
What Happens When a Storm Is Named
This is South Florida. A storage facility that has not thought carefully about hurricanes is not a storage facility, and you should ask the questions before you need the answers.
Come and see the environment before you send anything. Bring your registrar, your conservator or your insurer — we would rather they saw it than took our word for it.
Climate
Controlled temperature and relative humidity, continuously
Above
Above the floodplain — not a basement
Condition
Reported on intake and on every movement
Named
You know who handles your work
Water, then power, then access
The three failure modes in order. Water reaching the collection is catastrophic and irreversible. Loss of conditioning for days afterwards produces the humidity spike that does the slower damage. And access closure means nobody can check anything or move anything for as long as the roads are shut.
The period after a storm matters as much as the storm. Roads close, power may be out for days, and a facility conditioning a collection on generator has a finite fuel supply. What happens on day three is a more searching question than what happens during the event itself.
What to ask any facility
- Elevation relative to the floodplain — a basement is the wrong answer.
- What happens to conditioning during an extended outage.
- Whether the building is shuttered and to what standard.
- Access policy before, during and after a storm.
- How you will be told the collection is intact.
What to ask any Florida facility
Elevation relative to the floodplain, what happens to conditioning during an extended outage, how long fuel lasts, when access is suspended and resumed, and how you will be told the collection is intact.
Elevation is the one that cannot be improved by procedure, equipment or intention. A building either sits above the water or it does not, and that answer should come before any discussion of security or climate control.
How we handle it
- 01Store above the floodplain, not below grade.
- 02Secure the building ahead of a forecast storm.
- 03Suspend access when it is not safe, and say so.
- 04Inspect and report to clients once it is safe to do so.
- 05Document any environmental excursion honestly.
Ask where the collection sits relative to the floodplain, and ask it before you sign anything. It is the one variable that cannot be improved by procedure, generators or good intentions — a building either is above the water or it is not.
Said plainly
Where we stop
Access will be suspended when it is not safe, including when you would like to collect something. We will not put staff on the road during a storm to retrieve an object.
Common questions
- Are you above the floodplain?
- Yes. It is the question to ask any Florida facility first, because procedure cannot compensate for elevation.
- What about power?
- Extended outage is the second risk, and any excursion is documented honestly rather than quietly.
- Can we collect work before a storm?
- With enough notice. Once conditions are unsafe, access is suspended.
- How will we know it is fine?
- We inspect and report to clients as soon as it is safe.
What we store
Paintings
Stretched canvas and wooden panel respond to moisture in the air by moving. Stored well they are stable for decades; stored in a swinging environment they crack.
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Works on Paper
Drawings, prints, watercolours and documents. The damage is slow, cumulative and usually invisible until it is substantial.
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Photographs & Negatives
Photographic material is chemically active. Color dyes shift, acetate film decays, and both processes are driven by temperature and humidity.
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Sculpture & Objects
Three-dimensional works fail mechanically rather than chemically. The risks are handling, support and the point where somebody decided one person could manage it.
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Furniture & Decorative Arts
Antique furniture is a wooden structure held together with animal glue and faced with veneer. All three respond to humidity, and they respond differently from one another.
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Mixed Collections
Estates, private collections and the contents of a house being renovated. The material is mixed, and the problem is usually documentation rather than environment.
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More how it works
Intake & Condition Reporting
Intake is the most important day in a work's time with us, because everything afterwards is measured against what was recorded then.
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Access & Viewing
Stored work still needs to be seen — by you, your appraiser, a conservator, or a prospective buyer. Access is by appointment and it is handled rather than self-service.
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Insurance & Valuation
Your work is insured under your policy or a specialist fine art policy. Our role is to give your underwriter records they will accept.
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Tell us what needs to move.
What, from where, and roughly when. You do not need an inventory to start the conversation, and if the job belongs with an armored carrier we will say so on the call.