Background: The Bay Area Mutual Aid Network is an organization dedicated to encouraging and supporting disaster preparedness and response among its member libraries, archives, and museums. Membership includes those libraries that originally joined the Disaster Response Mutual Aid Pact, an outgrowth of the Bay Area Preservation Network (BAPNet) in 1998. Their 5-year mutual aid contracts expired in 2003 and BAPNet no longer exists. Because the California State Library and the California Preservation Program (CPP) are committed to facilitating disaster recovery plans in as many California libraries, archives, and cultural heritage institutions as possible, the CPP requested local representative, Mary Morganti, to reactivate and expand the network. In January 2006, the mutual aid pact was reinstituted and renamed the Bay Area Mutual Aid Network (BAMAN).
BAMAN goals are:
- to facilitate a network of people willing to help each other in times of local disaster with advice, support or actual recovery assistance;
- to ensure the continuing viability of the Network; and
- to maintain and expand multiple locations of disaster response supplies.
Benefits: BAMAN currently maintains 2 caches of disaster recovery supplies: a large cargo container housed on the Mills College campus in Oakland, and similar supplies stored at the San Francisco Department of Emergency Management on Turk Street. For this new BAMAN location, we’ve recently purchased and stocked 4 rolling storage bins so that you can just sign out for a bin, grab it, and go in an emergency. Every BAMAN member has access to these supplies on an as-needs basis, plus an up-to-date list of member institutions with contact information. Contents of a third container owned by NARA, the National Archives and Records Administration in San Bruno, mayalso be made available to BAMAN members by special request in an emergency. All supplies taken must be replaced within 30 days.
For access instructions, lists of supplies, and photos:San Francisco/Oakland.
BAMAN members are kept informed of disaster planning meetings and related activities through its occasional News Notes, which are distributed by email to all contacts at member institutions. BAMAN has previously hosted disaster plan update workdays at which members with existing disaster preparedness plans can work on updating them and sharing information, and special events such as “coffee at the container” for members to see the location, learn how to open the container, and to meet each other. BAMAN members are encouraged to attend CPP Disaster Preparedness Workshops and special water salvage workshops that are occasionally offered in the Bay Area.
BAMAN is open to and encourages new members to expand our network and increase the number of institutions with access to disaster response supplies.If you are interested in membership in BAMAN, please contact us at bayareamutualaidnetwork@gmail.com
See our list of member institutions!
For urgent concerns or questions about your existing institutional membership in BAMAN, you may contact one of us directly:
Mary Morganti, BAMAN Coordinator, mlmorganti@aol.com
Barbara Rominski, BAMAN Co-coordinator, bcmrominski@gmail.com
Vincent Moyer, BAMAN Communications Coordinator, moyerv@uchastings.edu