The Congressional Office of Compliance March 5 issued seven fire-safety citations to the Library of Congress, pointing to “an undue danger to the lives and safety of occupants” in all three of its buildings. Congressional Fire Marshal Ken Lauziere said the citations were based on relatively new fire codes that will “take some major effort” to apply to the library’s historic structure, the Associated Press reported March 6.
The action came in the wake of a January 25 report based on a 12-month inspection of LC buildings. “The library is strongly committed to correcting all these deficiencies an already corrected 76% of those that are the Library’s responsibility,” LC spokesperson Jill Brett told reporters. “We’ll proceed to correcting the remaining 24% as quick as possible.”
The citations listed fire dangers in book stacks, stairwells, book conveyor systems, electrical switch boxes, special collections areas, and the storage space for 30,000 early 20th-century audio recordings made on cylinders coated with flammable cellulose nitrate.
Posted March 12, 2001.