The initial explosion reportedly killed at least one person, and the resulting fire destroyed the entire contents of the vault, which included archived prints of silent and early sound films produced by MGM and its predecessors.
Studio manager Roger Mayer described the vaults as "concrete bunk houses" and stated that it was considered at the time as "good storage because [the films] couldn't be stolen".
However, Mayer believed that a sprinkler system would have made little difference because "the amount [the studio] lost by fire was minimal".
[3]: 39 The studio did not participate in the common practice of purposeful destruction of its catalog and even sought to preserve films of little apparent commercial value.
[3]: 22 However, the fire destroyed the only known copies of numerous silent films, including Lon Chaney's A Blind Bargain (1922)[2]: 12 and London After Midnight (1927)[4] as well as Greta Garbo's The Divine Woman (1928).