National Archives and Records Service film-vault fire at Suitland, Md. : hearings before a subcommittee of the Committee on Government Operations, House of Representatives, Ninety-sixth Congress, first session, June 19 and 21, 1979 (1979)

27 Is there a systematic way for you to determine that those steps are being taken ? Mr. EsTEPP. Are you talking about the film bunkers themselves or other Federal installations ? Mr. Kindness. Yes; the film bunkers and other buildings. Mr. EsTEPP. Basically we have a pretty good relationship with GSA when it comes to other Federal facilities. I am not certain of the actual control, but NASA, for example, I would imagine that does not come under GSA. But that is a Federal facility that takes up a lot of ground in Prince Georges County. We have an excellent rapport with them. If there are conditions introduced at NASA, their fire protection people give us a call. We go onsite and preplan. There is an exchange back and forth by which they notify us of tiling that we need to know. This kind of situation did not exist at Suitland. I believe that since the last incident, and with the kind of contact that we have had, we will have good close communication in the future. I do not believe that those bunkers are in the proper location. They should not be sitting approximately 100 or 150 feet away from a highly congested roadway. In the photographs in the upper left-hand corner, you can see Suitland Road mth an automobile passing. You can see the fire in the early stages. The products of combustion are probably at their most toxic level at that particular stage, when the cloud is yellow. It — ^the smoke — is shown traveling toward Suitland Road because the wind was blowing in that direction. To me, there is a threat to the public safety now. It has existed and we have just been lucky. The removal of those bunkei-s is the only thing that would forestall any further problems there, even though they are working to correct conditions within the building. I think things are too unstable to say that the situation will not repeat itself. Mr. Kindness. In the case of the storage of the nitrate film, is it unusual to have a backup system for the sprinkler system, or is that recommended procedure ? Mr. EsTEPP. There are a number of conditions that are recommended. First of all, in the building construction, there is redundancy required in fire doors, which did not exist on these vaults. There should be two doors — an inner door that would be closed in a sliding manner by the activation of a fusible link, and a door on the outside that would close by a self-closing mechanism when anyone entered or left the vault. There is a great deal of redundancy. As I mentioned earlier, it is a total system. The air-conditioning system failure certainly was the final flaw. Without the air-conditioning system working, there was a problem. "WTien the problem starts, all of the other building features are designed to control it, but if they are not working in concert with each other, then the whole system is going to fail. I think that is what occurred. Mr. Kindness. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Preyer. In connection with your statement that the facility should be removed from this area, and assuming that you had an explosion of the worst possible dimensions there — in which all of the vaults could blow up all at once or catch on fire — ^how far would the toxic gas spread in the area ?