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from occasional opening or closing of vault doors when film is stored or retrieved.
Inadequate film inspection and testing. One of the large commercial film manufacturers (whose concerns are not primarily archival) recommends that nitrate film be carefully examined throughout its length for signs of deterioration when it is received. Such an inspection of the Universal Newsreels had not been done since the time of their donation six to eight years ago, presumably because of a lack of staff. Socalled sight inspection of the film was done six to seven weeks before the fire. This consisted of opening cans of film and looking for obvious deterioration without unwinding the film. Some 5.7 million feet per day was "inspected" in what would scarcely be called a professional manner. Twenty cans of seriously deteriorating film were found and removed from vaults 9 or 10, the same area "the fire is thought to have started in. Given the age and storage conditions of this film, it is likely that additional deterioration would have been found had the film been unwound and properly inspected.
The alizarine-red heat test is an accepted method of determining the age of nitrate film and therefore the point at which it is likely to deteriorate. Based on such tests the agency could have instituted a program of more frequent inspection for nitrate film that was approaching the point at which it might ignite spontaneously.
Air-cooling units shut off. Each film vault has a separate control for its fan-coil cooling unit. When the contractor's men entered a vault to install anchors in the ceiling to hold the new air-conditioning units, it was necessary to shut off the cooling unit so it would not blow the dust into their faces. Drilling into the reinforced concrete ceiling created heavy dust in the vaults being worked on and in the adjacent hallway. The cooling units would have been off one to four hours before the fire.
Unshielded light bulbs. While working in the relatively confined space of the vaults (vault aisles are three feet wide), the contractor's workmen contin^lly broke light globes, leaving some vaults with unshielded 200-watt light bulbs. This would create a layer of hot air near the ceiling, which may have provided heat for spontaneous combustion of film stacked near the ceiling when added to the heat load from other sources.
Heat-producing drill. The heavy-duty drill used to make anchor holes in the reinforced concrete ceiling was blowing hot air within ten inches of the cans of nitrate film stacked close to the ceiling. Heat from drill tip as well as the motor added to the heat load near the ceiling.