The complaints of four unions representing Library of Congress workers were validated July 12 by the congressional Office of Compliance, which issued five serious citations that fixed the blame for the April 30 fire in LC’s Madison Building on the Architect of the Capitol’s failure to maintain safety standards. An LC staff engineer was temporarily blinded when he accidentally started the fire while trying to service a faulty electrical conductor.
According to the Associated Press, the compliance office charged the Architect of the Capitol for ignoring such standard safety protocols as installing equipment that would have opened an air duct during the fire instead of trapping smoke inside the Madison Building, and repairing the fire alarm system, whose failure to sound forced security officers to trip alarms manually instead of evacuating the building.
In response, the architect’s office established a new Life Safety Program Division July 13 to oversee compliance issues.
Posted July 19, 1999.