In this post about the vulnerability of the National Gallery and other Washington institutions to flooding if the endangered Potomac Park levee fails, I observed that these facilities “had better have a plan for keeping their treasures high and dry.”
Here’s what Deborah Ziska, the National Gallery’s chief of press and public information, had to say, in response to my query:
The National Gallery of Art continually reviews its emergency preparedness and, in the unlikely event floodwaters do come our way, we have a number of systems in place and additional ones that are ready for deployment to safeguard the art in the Gallery’s care at all times.
She also confirmed an alert I got from a CultureGrrl reader—that my description of what happened during the Washington flooding of 2006 was all wet. The problems then were caused by torrential rains, not by a cresting of the Potomac. The National Gallery did close then, due to “the failure of the General Services Administration central steam plant (located across the Mall behind the US Department of Agriculture Building), caused by the flooding,” which cut off “the NGA’s supply of steam…for three days.