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Library4 Cont. from Front Pageand 23 were treated at hospitals, most of them for heat exhaustion and burns from steam generated when water hit the blazing books. About 400 library patrons and employees were evacuated from the building, but none was reported injured.The fire started around 11 a.m. in the library’s book stacks and burned for lxk hours before it was extinguished at 6:30 p.m. The cause of the blaze was unknown.Fire Chief Donald Manning said it was ‘ ‘very treacherous — the worst fire to contain I’ve seen in my 31 years” as a firefighter.The fate of such rare works as theShakespeare portfolio and a first edition copy of James Joyce’s “Ulysses” was unknown after library officials toured portions of the darkand smoky building Tuesday night.“We have lost the U.S. patent collection,” Ms. Gay said. “It’s the largest in the Western United States. It was a very heavily used area of the library. ’ ’Tens of thousands of volumes in the fiction and periodical stack sections also were damaged, but the destruction was less extensive than she had feared, she said.“The Fire Department did a tremendous job of salvaging more than we thought possible,” Ms. Gay said.Murals of California history painted along the library’s second-story walls in the central rotunda were spared, but other murals were destroyed.Library spokesman Bob Reagansaid 30 percent of the collection may have been destroyed, and that damage would run into the millions of dollars. Many items in the collectionwere priceless and irreplaceable, hesaid.Tuesday’s blaze scorched the concrete building’s exterior but apparently left it intact. Inside, however, two of the three floors had partly collapsed and were littered with a jumble of burned furniture, shelving, fixtures, woodwork and book remains.The library, topped by a blue-and-gold tiled mosaic pyramid, was scheduled to undergo a $110 million renovation that would have emptied it of its valuable collection by July.The literary rescue effort was aided by 24 residents of the San Julian Shelter and Transition House, who volunteered to help in retrieving the damaged books.“We told them no problem — we’d be there,” said Dwight Grey, director of Skid Row Development Corp., which runs the house.
Newspaper Details
Marysville Yuba Sutter Appeal Democrat
Marysville, California, US
Wed, Apr 30, 1986
Page 10
Full Page
Clipped by
Julieta C.
NA, 01 Sep 2021
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