11 Firms Hope to Right the Books at L.A. Library

Things have a tendency to get wet.

A growing cottage industry of high-tech dry-out experts has emerged across the country in recent years to clean up after broken water mains and sprinkler systems gone awry, as well as to fight the effects of rain and floods and fires.

The leaders of the industry, as well as a couple of newcomers, were in Los Angeles on Wednesday to get a jump on the estimated $2-million to $3-million job of restoring the 700,000 books that were damaged by water in the two fires at Los Angeles Central Library last year.

The Library Commission has sought proposals on how to salvage the books that were soaked to varing degrees by firefighters. Since the fires in April and September of 1986, the books have been stowed at several ice houses around the city, tucked in and around frozen shrimp, beef and fruit at a cost of more than $40,000 a month.

The job of defrosting and drying out the books, maps, sheet music and other documents will be the biggest single restoration project of its kind, according to industry executives. And it could give the contract winner--or winners--a calling card for years to come.

“It’s big enough to get everyone’s attention,” said John Virball, regional manager of Cargocaire Moisture Control Services, in obvious understatement and to the amusement of his 10 competitors gathered Wednesday for a meeting with library officials.

A Two-Book ‘Disaster’

Although a library “disaster” is estimated to occur every five days, according to Don Hartsell, president of Houston-based Airdex Corp., disaster is in the eye of the beholder. “I got a call yesterday from a library about two rare books that were (water damaged),” said Robert Ritchie of San Francisco-based Document Reprocessors. “To them, that was a disaster.”

As a result, most of these reclamation firms consider even a $90,000 job to be a big piece of business.

So a project of the size proposed by the Library Commission is attracting some unusual competitors. Among them is Oregon Freeze Dry, a company that processes more than 350 foodstuffs, including rations for the U.S. Army.

“The only reason we’re looking at this is because of the volume,” said Jim Merryman, manager of production for the Albany, Ore., company. The company has dried books and documents in the past, he said, but it was a charitable job done for the state government. This would mark its first foray into the commercial end of the restoration business.

Even traditional salvage industry executives admit that the technology and procedures used by the food firm are not very different from the ones employed by main-line salvage companies.

Although each company has its own process, they all are based on the idea of slowly melting the frozen books and sucking out the moisture before it can cause more damage.

Some of the firms propose using portable tanks to restore the books on site, and others suggest trucking the books to permanent facilities they operate around the country. Oregon Freeze Dry would truck the books to its headquarters if it should win all or part of the contract.

Several aerospace firms, including McDonnell Douglas Corp., had initially expressed an interest in the project, but they pulled out before Wednesday’s mandatory meeting of potential bidders. Each of the remaining 11 firms, of 21 that initially expressed an interest, were given six boxes of six to 20 books to process and return as an example of their work.

The final proposals are to be submitted to library officials by Sept. 11, and the contract should be awarded within 90 days after that date, said Betty Gay, director of the Central Library.

Gay said she hopes to award the contract as soon as possible and begin moving processed books in November into a temporary facility being readied in the basement of St. Vincent’s Square, at the intersection of 7th Street and Broadway.

The request for proposals was delayed while the library staff researched the restoration process and wrote what industry executives said was the most complete and demanding set of specifications they have seen.

The bidding process on restorations is usually not as formal, executives said. “When you are up to your knees in water, the first guy with a pump usually gets the job,” said W. Craig Fillmann, vice president of Cargocaire.

The commission also put the proposal off because there was no place to store the books while the St. Vincent’s facility was being reconditioned. Renovations on the central library building are not expected to be competed until 1992.

The cost of the project is difficult for both library officials and the bidders to determine.

An industry benchmark is about $5 per book. The Los Angeles project, however, could be less because of the size of the job or more because of unusual and exacting standards. The Library Commission is asking for a one-year guarantee on the work being done, insisting that all work be completed within one year and that all the books be returned in the exact order they are taken.

That last demand is intended to reduce the filing problems for the library staff in trying to restack the 700,000 damaged books and 400,000 others that escaped the fires unscathed.

In an initial batch of 20,000 books defrosted by McDonnell Douglas three weeks after the first fire, 95% were considered usable.

“The cost of this project has to be as good as we can get,” said Gay. “But quality control is critical, because many of these books cannot be replaced.”