National Personnel Records Center fire


Fire underway, 1973, Aerial View of MILPERCEN, National Archives.

Date: July 12, 1973
Venue: National Personnel Records Center
Location: Overland, Missouri, United States
Coordinates: 38°41'06"N 90°22'14"W
Type: Fire
Cause: Unknown

The National Personnel Records Center fire of 1973, also known as the 1973 National Archives fire, was a fire that occurred at the Military Personnel Records Center (MPRC - part of the National Personnel Records Center) in Overland, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis, on July 12, 1973, striking a severe blow to the National Archives and Records Administration of the United States. MPRC, the custodian of military service records, lost approximately 16–18 million official military personnel records as a result of the fire.

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Fire

At 12:16:15 AM on July 12, 1973, the Olivette Fire Department reported to its dispatcher that the NPRC building was on fire. At 12:16:35, 20 seconds later, a building security guard picked up the fire phone and relayed the report of a passing motorcyclist who also observed the fire. By 12:17:25, the first fire trucks were dispatched: three pumpers and two other emergency vehicles from the Community Fire Protection, arriving at 12:20:35. Forty-two fire districts eventually contributed to the effort to put out the fire.

Ultimately, the fire burned out of control for 22 hours, being fought from the exterior of the building because heat and smoke within compelled firefighters to withdraw at 3:15 AM. Insufficient water pressure plagued efforts and a pumper broke down mechanically in its 40th continuous hour of operation. Crews entered the building again on July 14 while the fire continued to smolder for another two days. The fire was declared out on the morning of July 16, but crews continued using spray to suppress rekindling until the end of the month.

Cause

The exact cause of the fire was not fully determined. An investigation in 1975 suggested embers of cigarettes present in several trash cans as a possible cause, and at least one local newspaper reported that an employee had started the fire by smoking in the records area (a report largely assumed to be false). Deliberate arson was ruled out as a cause almost immediately by investigators, as interviews of some personnel who had been in the building just twenty minutes before the first fire alarm reported nothing out of the ordinary. In 1974, investigators of the General Services Administration stated that an electrical short was most likely the cause of the fire but that, owing to the near-total destruction of the sixth floor, where the fire had occurred, a specific investigation into the electrical systems was impossible.

Affected records

The losses to Federal military records collection included:

• 80% loss to records of U.S. Army personnel discharged November 1, 1912, to January 1, 1960;
• 75% loss to records of U.S. Air Force personnel discharged September 25, 1947, to January 1, 1964, with names alphabetically after Hubbard, James E.;
• Some U.S. Army Reserve personnel who performed their initial active duty for training in the late 1950s but who received final discharge as late as 1964.

None of the records that were destroyed in the fire had duplicate copies made, nor had they been copied to microfilm. No index of these records was made prior to the fire, and millions of records were on loan to the Veterans Administration at the time of the fire. This made it difficult to precisely determine which records were lost.

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