This Week

Still The Guardian

FROM THE ASHES from page 15

Preserving Valuables

just north of 11 Mile Road. The wing housed the
weekly paper's business, advertising, computer and
design departments.
Firefighters successfully prevented the fire from
spreading to the other wing, housing editorial, Style
magazine and Web site offices, which suffered heavy
smoke and water damage.
The fire was still smoldering after 11 p.m. Sunday.
An electrical malfunction in a 48-square-foot corn-
puter room containing switching equipment and a
server caused the fire, according to the Southfield
Fire Department. The fire spread through the ceiling
of the one-story, 9,200-square-foot building.
The Jewish News, which has a staff of 56, was
closed at the time. Publisher Arthur M. Horwitz
was the last to leave for the day at 2 p.m.
The businesses closest to the Jewish News,
Dr. Richard Brown and the Screen Actors Guild,
escaped flame damage, but suffered enough smoke
damage to seek temporary quarters.

Fire and smoke damage can be removed with proper care.

the Detroit Public Library had a
devastating flood when the city's
storm drains backed up and water
rained down into the basement
where the collection is housed. The
$300 million collection of valuable
manuscripts includes an original
Mark Twain story and Detroit
founder Antoine de la Mothe
Cadillac's papers. Though docu-
ments, photographs, negatives and
books were damaged, collection
manager David Poremba says, "We
didn't lose anything."
Document Reprocessors, a disaster
response group in Rochester, N.Y.,
flew a team to Detroit. Refrigeration
Offers Of Help
Robert Powell of trucks arrived the next day.
Even as staff members gathered to watch firefight-
"We boxed up materials and put
Detroit wraps up
ers battle the blaze, the public began to show sup-
them in the refrigeration trucks,
smoke-damaged
port. Rabbi Harold Loss of Temple Israel reached
which slowly lowered the temper-
chairs at the
Jewish News Editor Robert Sklar by telephone and
ature to freezing" to stabilize
Jewish News.
offered to come to the fire scene to provide corn-
them, says Poremba. Then they
He works for
fort. He also offered office space and computers at
BelforUS/Inrecon. were trucked back to New York
the West Bloomfield temple.
and placed in a freeze-dry facility.
Dr. Jeffrey Devries of West. Bloomfield showed
"The books are as good or better than before they got
up with pizzas and soft drinks for anyone who
wet," he says of the multi-million-dollar recovery project.
was hungry.
Archivist Christein says most of the Jewish commu-
When the staff gathered at temporary headquar-
nity's historical collection is "stored at the Walter P.
ters in the nearby Embassy Suites Hotel at
Reuther Library at Wayne State University because it is
Franklin and Beck roads the next day, food trays
climate-controlled and has fire suppression sprinklers
and phone calls with offers to donate office space,
specially made for libraries and archives. The walls
supplies and skills came from all quarters. From
there are made of concrete and the shelves of metal.
the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit, to
There's also no carpet that could spread a fire."
the Workmen's Circle-Arbeter Ring, to the New
— Story Development Editor Keri Guten Cohen
Calvary Baptist Church in Detroit — organiza-
contributed to this report
tions and individuals offered what they could to
keep the paper going.
Community support has been overwhelming,
said Horwitz, who is president of Jewish
Renaissance Media, parent company of the Jewish
Heidi Christein, archivist at the Leonard N. Simons
News. JRM also publishes Style magazine, Style at
Jewish Community Archives at the Jewish Federation
the Jewish News, N Sourcebook and the Atlanta
of Metropolitan Detroit, offers these tips for keeping
Jewish Times and operates the Web site, Jewish.com
personal documents and photographs safe:
"I've personally received over 300 e-mail mes-
• Don't do anything to an object that cannot be
sages and dozens and.dozens of phone calls from
reversed. If you don't know what the result of your
people offering assistance — churches, syna-
actions will be, don't do it.
gogues, you name it," Horwitz said.
"It's been gratifying, heartwarming, and I know
• Store items in a cool, clean, dry and dust-free loca-
it further helps to motivate the staff in putting
tion, with fairly constant humidity such as a bed-
together this week's paper — something they'll
room closet. Try to use acid-neutral boxes, not plas-
remember always."
tic boxes or old shoeboxes.
Rabbi Hal Greenwald of the Jewish Community
• Store color and black and white photos in separate
Center
of Metropolitan Detroit said his first
boxes. Avoid photo albums with black pages or self-
response to the fire was shock, then concern.
adhesive (so called "magnetic") pages. Don't tape
"I was really forced to think about the value of the
photos into albums; use photo corners. Identify peo-
Jewish. News," he said. "It glues the Jewish communi-
ple, places and dates on the back edge of the photo,
ty together. And it serves as the mouthpiece. It is a
using a No. 2 pencil or a special photo pen.
unifier. Our community doesn't speak to each other
• Photocopy newspaper clippings onto white paper.
the same way we do through the Jewish News."E
Newsprint is very acidic.

•••

SHARON LUCKERMAN
Staff Writer

IV

ttia

2/1

2002

18

hen fire devastated the Jewish News
office in Southfield Sunday evening,
Jan. 27, no one was hurt — but valu-
able papers, photographs and books
were greatly damaged.
Modern technology, however, can remedy smoke
and water damage.
"Most important is doing something within 48
hours of the damage," says Heidi Christein, director
of the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit's
Leonard N. Simons Jewish Community Archives.
Action was taken quickly to salvage documents,
photographs and 60 years' worth of leather-bound
copies of the Jewish News from the newspaper office.
The fire was extinguished after 11 p.m. Sunday.
Salvage workers began work Monday morning.
The precious bound copies, symbolic of the paper's
upcoming 60th anniversary in March, were taken
from bookshelves in Publisher Arthur M. Horwitz's
office. Miraculously, the books were not burned,
though the walls were charred and the ceiling had
caved in around them. But they had suffered water
and smoke damage. Workers from BelforUS/Inrecon
in Dearborn carefully piled the more than 200 vol-
umes in a van and took them for special treatment.
"The technology is updated constantly," says Paul
Schwartz, division manager of BelforUS/Inrecon.
"The bound books can either be freeze-dried in an
extensive process that involves putting them in a spe-
cial chamber. That can take approximately 35 days
and half-a-million dollars. Or they can be dried using
desiccant dehumidifiers, which will leave them pu
With freeze-drying, there's no chance of puffiness."
Regardless of which way they are treated, the
bound copies and everything else taken from the fire
will be put in an ozone chamber for about 48 hours
to chemically neutralize the odor from fire and
smoke, Schwartz says.
Sometimes, science works wonders.
Two years ago, the Burton Historical Collection at

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Tips To Consider