The Fire

April 29, 1986, was a refreshing, clear-skied day. At 10 am, the Los Angeles Central Library had around two hundred visitors waiting to enter, and an equal number of employees working hard. Once the library opened its doors for the day, a stream of people eagerly flooded in. Everyone immediately got to work, doing research, reading, watching tapes, etc. Ironically, not long after a meeting discussing the long-due sprinkler system the library required, the smoke alarms set off at 11 am. The library’s run-down detectors often caused false alarms. Assuming the evacuation procedure would be brief, most of the librarians and visitors simply left their belongings behind. When firefighters came to the scene, they found thin wisps of smoke coming from the side of the building. As the blaze quickly climbed the interior of the building, the temperature quickly rose to four hundred fifty degrees, then nine hundred. The library burned for 7 ½ hours straight. In the end, fighting the fire required 1,400 tanks of air; 13,440 square feet of salvage covers; two acres of plastic sheeting; ninety bales of sawdust; and more than three million gallons of water. Sixty firefighter companies, and three hundred fifty firefighters, almost the entire LAFD, battled the Los Angeles Central Library fire of April 29, 1986.