In times of crisis such as flood or fire, don't wait until mushrooms are growing out of your precious research documents before calling in the experts, a visiting American mould-expert told The Royal Gazette on Wednesday.

"Unfortunately, too many people wait until it is too late to call in the experts," said Dr. Parker. "By the time you see mushrooms there isn't much you can do. They are most likely all through the documents and the pages are hopelessly stuck together."

Entomologist Dr. Tom Parker, president of Pest Control Services, Inc. in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania was one of several speakers at a recent two-day disaster preparedness conference 'Expecting the Unexpected: Disaster Preparedness and Response' organised by Karla Hayward at the Bermuda Archives. Around 45 professionals from the Bermuda Police Service, fire service, court system, schools, museums and libraries attended the conference. Two representatives from the National Archives of Trinidad and Tobago also participated. The North East Document Conservation Centre (NEDCC) in Andover, Massachusetts led the conference.

The workshop's purpose was to emphasise the need for disaster planning within the Island's archives and museum community, and to give participants hands-on experience with proper methods for salvaging damaged collections. Bermuda Archives hoped to train representatives of Bermuda's cultural institutions to become a cooperative emergency response force, capable of responding to cultural emergencies anywhere on the Island. A mock disaster exercise was planned at the Hamilton Fire Station, but never took place because of rainy weather.

Dr. Tom Parker said that while mould could be microscopic, it could wreak as much havoc as fire or flood.

"There are two types of mould problems," said Dr. Parker. "There is a crisis situation with a fire or a flood or a burst pipe. Then there is another type of mould situation called 'mould blooms', caused by excessive humidity."

He said fire could really destroy an archive for good, depending on the severity, but floods caused by natural disasters or a burst pipe could often be dealt with, if the problem was tackled quickly.

"With a burst pipe there are companies that can come in and suck the moisture right out of the building," he said. "The organisation itself should have a disaster preparedness plan, so that if something happens they can box documents up and get them into freezers. Once the documents are frozen they can sit there until people can make a decision about what has to be done. The fire situation is much more serious. Things get charred and really destroyed and that is really devastating."

He said certain moulds could be dangerous to people, particularly those who suffer from different respiratory conditions.

"If you have a mould outbreak, certainly people wanting to clean-up the mould outbreak would want to protect themselves properly," he said. "In certain situations they may want to close off the portion of the building that they are working in."

He said mould is naturally everywhere in the environment, and certain mould spores can lie dormant for 15 to 20 years just waiting for moisture.

"When mould suddenly goes haywire it is an indication that something is not right about the environment within a building," he said. "It is showing that there is too much moisture in the materials. You have allowed the materials to soak up too much moisture."

Dr. Parker said you'd expect a subtropical island like Bermuda to be "knee deep in mould" but that wasn't necessarily the case.

"As long as the humidity and temperature stays within a certain range and doesn't spike for long periods of time, you don't get mould outbreaks," he said. "What you need is some sort of trigger. Usually, that trigger is an excessive moisture event, over a long period of time or over a week or two, or several weeks. That triggers the mould spores to germinate and bingo you have mould.

Here in Bermuda the relative humidity is pretty much constant. Temperatures don't vary that much so you don't have triggers. Once you get a trigger then bingo."

Dr. Parker has a doctoral degree in entomology with a minor in chemistry and a split major with plant pathology and plant diseases. He went into pest control after being in the military.

"After I got out of Vietnam and Cambodia, I took a position as a technical director for a large pest control firm headquartered in Philadelphia," he said. "After a couple of years they sold the company to a very large company and I then went out on my own as a private consultant. I have been working with museums, historic houses, libraries, collections and archives for 32 years, setting up what is known as integrated pest management programmes."

He said his job is basically to protect buildings and collections from being eaten up.

"Next week I will be going up to New York City and working on a 12-storey building inspecting it from top to bottom," he said. "I will be inspecting all the collections, all the exhibits and then setting up a programme for them to protect their collections from being eaten by mould."

In addition to the museum fieldwork and teaching, Dr. Parker has also been a technical expert witness in over 550 litigation matters, primarily dealing with wood-destroying organisms, pesticide misapplication and contamination, and general entomological cases.