Archive papers spared serious damage in flood

AUGUSTA – Nineteenth century maps dealing with a Maine-New Hampshire boundary dispute were among the papers that escaped damage when a water filter burst and flooded the Maine State Archives.

Other documents that were dampened were being dried out Monday while state archivist James Henderson inspected the official state records to assess the extent of damage.

“We do not know of any records that were actually destroyed,” Henderson said. He estimated that less than 1 percent of the archive’s contents had any damage at all.

Among the most heavily damaged papers are birth, death and marriage documents stored in filing drawers that became filled with water.

Some of the ink washed off but they are still readable, said Henderson.

Dozens of leather-bound journals of the state’s Executive Council, some dating to the 1830s and 1840s, stood with covers open on a table as a fan blew air toward their dampened pages.

“This is about all we can do,” said Sylvia Sherman, director of the Archive Services Division.

Maine and New Hampshire are at odds over which state has jurisdiction over an island in the Piscataqua River where Portsmouth Naval Shipyard is located. The U.S. Supreme Court has set April 16 as the date for oral arguments on a motion to dismiss the long-standing dispute.

The archive maps relevant to the dispute were covered with plastic or heavy cardboard and protected from water damage, Henderson said.

The maps have various dates, but all of them go back to years before Maine became a state in 1820, Sherman said. The maps appear to include copies of originals that may be housed elsewhere.

Henderson said water leaking from a broken filter on a water line in the archive’s laboratory set off a fire alarm Saturday afternoon that brought the Augusta Fire Department to the building.

About 2 inches of water flooded the top floor and was leaking to two floors below where archival records are stored. The water may have started leaking as early as Friday night, Henderson said.

The lab has a drain on its floor, but it had been covered to cut off an odor that had been rising from the drainpipe, Henderson said. He added that it was not clear whether the drain was functional anyway.

On Monday, it appeared that cardboard boxes in which records are stored took the brunt of the damage, although some other papers were dampened.

The archive, repository for the equivalent of 90 million pieces of state paper, is located in the 30-year-old Maine Cultural Building in the Capitol Complex. The other two buildings in the complex, the State House and Cross State Office Building, are undergoing major renovations.

Henderson said the weekend damage comes as the need for renovations in the newest of the three buildings in the complex is being assessed.

Besides damaging records, the flood loosened tiles on the archive floor. Offices are being relocated temporarily, forcing the archive to remain closed to the public for at least a week.

Henderson said only a small percentage of the archive’s overall contents are stored on microfilm. The vital statistics that were damaged in flooded file drawers had just been microfilmed a few weeks ago.

But a large percentage of archive material that is used by the public is microfilmed, he said.