Prague Floods of 2002
Books Freeze dried at Vegetable Freezing Plant
In August 2002 a massive flood struck the Czech capital city of Prague. It was the worst flood in five hundred years. A series of dams on the Vltava River north of Prague, built to protect the city from floods, prevented the engorged Vltava from dispersing and instead directed all its force toward Prague.
The collections of the National Library of the Czech Republic and the Prague Municipal Library were inundated. Despite the chaos and lack of preparation, Czech librarians and archivists were able to send a significant percentage of their flooded collections to be frozen,thus staving off immediate destruction of these historic collections by water or mold. Once the materials were frozen, librarians had to decide the best way to thaw and disinfect the items so that these materials could be used again. Influenced partly by cost, Czech librarians chose an experimental method over standard methods such as vacuum packing or vacuum freeze drying to treat the bulk of the frozen library materials. 1
Arctic stockrooms of Mochovske Mrazirny, a vegetable-freezing plant outside Prague used to save books
The owners of Mochovske Mrazirny, a vegetable-freezing plant outside Prague, promised as much help as they could provide by offering to host frozen library and archival materials in their facilities.
Librarians and volunteers managed to send twenty thousand volumes of rare books to be frozen within that first twenty-four hours. These included2
the rare Prague bible of 1488, the first in the vernacular Czech.
music scores by Mozart
original manuscripts of poems by the Czech romantics,
letters by Leos Janacek from the archives of the Czech Philharmonic,
valuable papers from the Academy of Science,
prisoner transport lists from the former Nazi concentration camp in the fortress town of Terezin.
The floodwaters – drowned the cellars of the Central Library – entirely washed away the branch in Holeovice, including about 75% of the holdings – entirely washed away the branch in Karlín, including 100% of the holdings – flooded the archive of rare and historic printed materials, destroying all the equipment and about 10% of holdings. 90% of holdings flooded and more or less damaged.3
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Ray, Emily. “The Prague Library Floods of 2002: Crisis and Experimentation.” Libraries & the cultural record 41.3 (2006): 381–391.
Conally, Kate (Aug. 28, 2002). Eins... zwei... dry The Guardian.
Rehak, Tomas (2003). Municipal Library of Prague: One Year After the Floods. International Association of Metropolitan Libraries 2003 Conference.
What a story! I visited Prague in 2005 and saw no signs of the flood. Most Americans and Brits are unaware that Prague was essentially a German city. It is home to the oldest German University in the world. I found that, although I didn't understand a word of Czech, I could make my way through the city adequately using German.