The time to think about protecting your art collection is not when high winds are propelling a raging wildfire toward your community. Just as museums prepare for natural disasters, so should private collectors who live in areas vulnerable to wildfires, hurricanes and earthquakes.
Failing to plan for an emergency is the number one mistake collectors make, and it’s an understandable one. Your home is very personal, and it’s hard to contemplate that it could be badly damaged or destroyed. But if you don’t develop a plan, you could find yourself making hasty decisions ahead of an evacuation. If you can’t take everything, know which possessions—both artwork and sentimental belongings—you most want to save. It’s hard to think clearly when disaster is upon you. Your evacuation process will move faster if you have developed a strategy.
To prepare for an unexpected natural event, you should consider the following:
• Make a video of your collection. Hopefully, you’ll never need it, but fires can be especially devastating. If you can show your insurance company a video of your collection inside your home, it will help the insurance company process your claim more quickly.
• Reserve space in a fine arts storage warehouse, ideally a warehouse with staff trained to handle fragile artwork. These facilities, which charge a monthly rent to reserve your space, tend to be located in cities.
• Find out how long it would take the warehouse to get a truck to your residence and how much time would be needed to carefully pack and ship your artwork.
• Think about what you should do in the event a fire or flood moves into your area. Wind makes a fire situation ever-changing and you may need to evacuate sooner rather than later. Your personal safety comes first. Should you be faced with the need to evacuate as soon as possible and it is safe to do so, pack as much of your collection as possible into your car and hope for the best. If you’ve planned for an emergency evacuation ahead of time, you will have prioritized what pieces are most valuable to you.
• Maintain lush, green landscapes around on your property, particularly if you are the owner of a large, high value collection. Consult with landscapers and fine arts specialists about the types of vegetation that best impede a fire’s progress.
• Some homeowner insurance companies provide a service to have your home sprayed with fire retardant materials to prevent the house from burning. Find out if the service is available for you. These companies use GPS systems to monitor the locations and direction of wildfires and are able to gauge how long it would take for them to safely reach a home and treat it with retardant sprays.
• Consider building a “safe” room or plan what artwork might fit into your home safe. In one recent case, a homeowner’s house was destroyed, but valuable prints stored in the family safe survived the fire with only minor damage.