It’s a sunny day at the Restoration Management Company in Kent and in a parking lot next to a busy street several workers clad in white hazmat suits are cleaning a layer of soot off the Old Tiger fire cart — one of the older vehicles recovered from the Aberdeen Museum of History fire.
Using metal paint scrapers, the workers have spent hours chipping away the black layer left from the June 9 fire that destroyed the Armory building, which housed the museum. Some parts of the vehicle, which was used to fight the 1903 fire that destroyed nearly all of downtown Aberdeen, are obviously beyond salvaging, while others sections look untouched.
Last week, Restoration Management Co., which was contracted by the city for artifact recovery, moved about 640 cardboard boxes of items recovered from the museum to their warehouse in Kent, where they will be stored until Aberdeen finds space to store it in the city. The city issued a request for proposals in November for new storage space.
The boxes, stacked in large wooden crates, are labeled with wildly different things, ranging from clown suits and mink furs to film negatives and art sketches. A few crates are filled with larger artifacts, like a wooden horse from a carousel, a wooden ship wheel, and two vintage pianos sitting in the corner. These larger items are wrapped in a combination of blankets and plastic wrapping, while the smaller ones are protected with bubble wrap and packing paper.
Prior to last week, the Restoration Management Team and museum staff spent months at the Armory saving what they could. Every artifact was shown to Museum Director Dave Morris and the museum’s archivist Dann Sears, who decided whether each item should be saved or thrown away because it was too damaged. According to Morris, about 75 to 80 percent of all the artifacts were lost in the fire.
Every box shipped to the warehouse was numbered, and a photo and written inventory was taken of every item inside.
Morris already has a good idea of what all made it out of the building, but he said the next step will be making a new inventory and going through the museum’s computer catalog to figure out what’s missing.
Aside from the artifacts held at the warehouse in Kent, there are also numerous photos and written documents still at the Washington State Archives in Tumwater.
As the workers scraped soot away on Old Tiger, the dulled red coat of original paint gradually became visible. Morris was watching nearby. While he was relieved to see the cart intact, he said it’s a reminder that numerous artifacts will have to be repaired or partially re-created.
“I have to re-create Aberdeen history — good, bad and indifferent,” said Morris.
After chipping away all the soot, Restoration Management Operations Manager Emilio Canedo said their next step would be to use soft hand pads to wipe them down, before storing them in the warehouse.
Of the boxes that were taken to Kent, Morris said most of the items were in “decent” condition and can be saved.
Along with Old Tiger, the restoration company cleaned a couple other final large artifacts last week, including a large metal bell from the steeple of First Congregational Church that was installed in 1890, as well as a wooden boat from the now-closed Burchcraft Boats company in Hoquiam.
(Louis Krauss | Grays Harbor News Group) This antique bell from First Congregational Church is one of the last artifacts that was cleaned last week at a warehouse in Kent.
Louis Krauss | Grays Harbor News Group Aberdeen Museum of History director Dave Morris inspects the damaged wheels of another antique fire cart in Kent last week.
