The South Peace Regional Archives has been closed to the public due to excessive flooding in the facility.
According to a recent social media post, the flooding has impacted staff workplaces and will affect the archives’ ability to process research requests. As a result, the facility is not expected to reopen until sometime next year.
Despite the headache the floods have caused for archive staff, Executive Director Ellyn Vandekerkhove reassures history lovers that none of the archives themselves have been affected by the flood.
“We were very very happy and relieved none of the records were directly impacted by the water,” she says. “We’re working with a company out of Grande Prairie just to make sure the humidity stays as stable as we can to make sure there’s no secondary damage to any of the archives.”
While responding to questions from residents, the archive indicated the flooding was caused by the city’s recent freeze-thaw cycle, resulting in a backup in the facility’s drainage pipes.
Vandekerkhove adds the facility does have measures in place to ensure files are protected, even in a worst-case scenario.
“We have a fair amount of redundancies in the way that we package materials, just so that if in the event they come into contact with anything,” she says. “We have steel shells that kind of protect, [and] that’s so we have multiple layers before the records themselves would be impacted.”
“We do have some early warning systems as far as moisture coming in, which unfortunately was not where the water came in this time, so we’ll be looking to expand that to make sure we don’t have a repeat.”
The Executive Director maintains the big question now, being when the facility can reopen, is largely up to the damage assessment. She says the facility will have a better read on the extent of the damage as soon as the end of the week; however, as far as reopening goes, Vandekerkhove says as soon as public-facing spaces like the reading room are repaired, the facility will open once again.
