Over the years fires have robbed historians of important records. In 1800, a fire at the War Department, destroyed the records of the first ten years of our country's existence; an 1833 fire at the US Treasury destroyed early fiscal records; significant paintings and other relics went up in flames in an 1851 fire in the capitol building; and the 1921 fire at the Census Bureau destroyed most of the 1890 census. But in terms of the number of records and people affected, none of the earlier fires rival the July 12, 1973 at National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis. The building housing NPRC, was built in 1956. The following year, it was determined that future buildings would require sprinkler systems and firewalls. An ominous foreboding of things to come. The building itself was 6 stories high and 728 feet long and 282 feet wide. It housed over 52 million records from all branches of the military. There were no sprinklers, nor were there firewalls except those separating the offices from the records. A fireproof vault contained high ranking officers and other VIP records. At 16 minutes after midnight on July 12, 1973, the first alarm came into the North County Fire Alarm System, a communications link for area fire companies. 20 seconds later the second alarm came in from a guard. Within 4 minutes two firetrucks were on the scene. By 1:34 am the sixth alarm was sounded. By 3:15 am, the entire 6th floor was on fire. The fire companies battled the fire by using snorkles to pour water into the 6th floor. By 2:44 on the morning of July 14th firemen were able to get to the 6th floor. By the morning of July 16th the crisis as far as the fire department was concerned was over and only one pumper remained. When the damage assessment team reached the 6th floor they found that only 10% of the 22 million records could be salvaged. The most damaged records were Army records from 1912 to 1959 and to a lesser extent Air Force records from 1947 to 1963 for surnames beginning with the letters I through Z. Records of Army personnel discharged between January 1 and July 11 received minimal damage. They found that the firemen's hoses had actually knocked records off the tops shelves and those waterlogged records helped keep the records on the bottom shelves from igniting.