Gulf Islands National Seashore visitor center.
Rusted cannon tubes at Jamestown.
Responding To Disasters When Hurricane Isabel flooded Jamestown in 2003, threatening its precious artifacts, the National Park Service was unprepared to deal with the magnitude of the damage. The park service learned some hard lessons, one of which was that they needed an emergency-response team trained to preserve museum collections and archaeological resources.
Rusted metal objects taken from Fort Pickens.
By Paula Neely
american archaeology
NPS
O
n September 18, 2003, when Hurricane Isabel roared through Virginia, archaeologist Bill Kelso watched as water began seeping under the door of the cottage on Jamestown Island, where he and his wife were staying. Established in 1607, Jamestown was the first permanent English settlement and is now one of the premiere archaeological sites in North America. As the water rose, Kelso decided to see if he could get to the office building across the street where artifacts from the excavation of the James Fort site were housed in a hurricane-proof vault. He knew they would be safer there, but the water in the road was up to his shoulders, so he turned back. Just then, a burst of wind flattened the crepe myrtle trees beside the cottage.“I thought, ‘Whoa!’ There were miniature
Sara Wolf (center) and Bob Sonderman (in the dark shirt) are two members of the original MERT formed to deal with the types of disasters seen in the photographs above.
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