Preserving Memories – Reflections on Hurricane Sandy

Preserving Memories – Reflections on Hurricane Sandy

 

Remnants of a personal tragedy
Remnants of a personal tragedy

The middle-aged woman reaches down into the mud and debris left behind by Hurricane Sandy and pulls out a twisted, bent photograph of a beautiful woman in an elaborate wedding dress. “This is my mother,” she says, “It is the only photo I have left.” It is a comment that is echoed by countless others. “I wish I could have saved my photograph albums,” “I wish I had the photos of my childhood,” “I couldn’t save my documents and photographs.”

New York City Fire truck
New York City Fire truck

If YOU only have five minutes to save your possessions before disaster strikes, what will you take? What means the most? How do you go about preserving memories?

The haunting images from Hurricane Sandy bring back memories. When our house burns down some years ago, the result of an electrical fire, the firefighters who respond to the alarm not only battle the blaze, they also rescue dozens of our photo albums sitting on a shelf. They bundle them into a quilt that is still intact and drag them out.

When we ask what had prompted them to do this in the midst of fighting the fire, they reply, “These are the only things that mean anything to people. It is what we would want to have saved from our house if we were in your situation.”

In the end, it is the greatest gift they have given us. Everything else is just “stuff” that can be replaced. The memories from these images are Priceless.

We are fortunate in Hurricane Sandy. We live in a part of New York City which escapes relatively unscathed from the hurricane’s wrath whereas so many others in the Tri-state area lose everything. It is a matter of luck. Had the winds blown differently, we would be looking through rubble as well, trying to preserve memories.

Original image of HMS Implacable from 1944
The original image of HMS Implacable from 1944

If you think this type of incident is a ‘one-off’ that can’t happen to you, think again. Whether a natural disaster (hurricane, tornado, earthquake, flood, fire) or a man-made one (exploding pipelines, civil unrest, etc), if the fickle finger of fate points your way, you could be here too But it is never too late to take steps to safeguard your truly irreplaceable possessions — your photographs and documents.

Having recovered the photographs from our house fire (some of which were photographs of our great-grandparents), we spend several years cleaning off the soot and smoke and then scanning them to create digital archives on the computer. We do the same with our documents.

Each photograph/documents is backed up on several portable hard drives. These reside with various family members and in a fire-proof, waterproof safe to ensure that they aren’t all in the same place, should disaster strike. We also keep a copy permanently with us when we travel.

If you have only a few photographs, there are plenty of commercial services that will scan them onto a disc for you. If you want to do it yourself, it is relatively simple. You need a computer with a USB port and sufficient memory (at least 128 RAM), a scanner and backup hard drives. If most of your photos are prints and slides, a flatbed scanner works well. All scanners come with basic software that you load on your computer. You can also use software like Photoshop to clean up/fix photographs after you have scanned them.

A restored copy of HMS Implacable after scanning and processing
A restored copy of HMS Implacable after scanning and processing

Before you start scanning, be sure that your scanner glass is clean; you should also wipe down the front of the photograph to remove any dust specks. To give yourself maximum flexibility if you want to print or enlarge the photo at some later date, set the image resolution of your scanner to 300 or 600 dpi (dots per inch).

Before you start scanning, decide on a filing system for the photographs. Some people save photographs by date, others by subject and yet others use both. Choose whatever system works best for you. It is a good idea to add captions or keywords to the photos so that you can retrieve them at a later date. Also, name the individuals in the images so that future generations will not wonder who they are.

After each scanning session, you should back up your work on at least two hard drives. Unfortunately, hard drives can become corrupted or fail which is why multiple copies become critical. You can also save your photographs and documents on some of the commercial archiving sites like iCloud.

Scanning your photographs is a good excuse to take a trip down memory lane. And, should the unthinkable happen, at least you will be able to quickly grab your tiny hard drive and run with no regrets that your memories are being left behind to an uncertain fate.

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