Water pipe break briefly shuts down Burpee Museum, clean up continues

ROCKFORD - More than 200 artifacts and other museum pieces will need restoration in the wake of a broken water pipe at the Burpee Museum of Natural History.

The pipe broke between the time the museum closed Monday for the Christmas holiday and reopened at 9 a.m. Thursday.

Employees arrived to find 2 inches of water on the main-floor vestibule, gift shop and Milton Mahlburg Auditorium, where the broken water inside a south wall was discovered.

The floodwaters would have been even deeper if water hadn't leaked down the walls and air vents into lower-level storage rooms where the museum houses a vast majority of its collection.

"It was literally raining in here," Executive Director Maureen Mall said. "We're still mitigating."

Dispersed among the museum's diverse collection of 70,000 paleontology, geology, biology and anthropology specimens are 20 to 30 Servpro dehumidifiers and fans.

Like most museums, Burpee keeps 90 percent of its collection in storage, rotating exhibits as needed to keep the public coming back. However, much of the museum's storage space is in lower-level climate-controlled rooms usually off-limits to the public, with the exception of the Paleo Viewing Lab.

The museum reopened Saturday - except for the lower level.

Mall and other employees spent much of Thursday toting thousands of stuffed birds, wild animals and Indian artifacts, including a hooded buffalo-hide ceremonial coat, into the lower-level River View Room where the pieces were placed on tables and aired out.

"The smell of wet taxidermy is very pleasant," Mall said facetiously.

Even if water did not fall directly on an artifact, the sudden increase in moisture was damaging.

As an example, Scott Williams displayed a petrified dinosaur bone coated in a white grainy substance. "It's starting to leach out salt," the director of exhibits and science said.

Despite the water damage, Mall assured that no artifacts will be tossed: "They will either be restored or kept as is."

The total cost of the damages is still being assessed.

"We're working with the (Rockford) Park District and insurance adjustors," she said.

Chris Green: 815-987-1241; cgreen@rrstar.com; @chrisfgreen