[1] In 1951, the Department of Defense hired the Detroit firm of Hellmuth, Yamasaki, and Leinweber, architects, to design a facility for its Demobilized Personnel Records Center.

The firm visited several similar operations, including a U.S. Navy records center at Garden City, New York, and a Department of Defense facility in Alexandria, Virginia, to study their functions and storage systems.

The Naval records center, for example, was outfitted with a full fire sprinkler system, while the Department of Defense facility was not.

[1] Department of Defense officials approved a design plan that omitted sprinklers and heat and smoke detectors.

Moreover, each floor had large spaces for records storage stretching hundreds of feet and containing no firewalls or other measures to limit the spread of fire.

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.

A custodian admitted in October 1973 that he had been smoking in the file room and stubbed out his cigarette on a shelf, and he assumed the fire started because of his actions.

[4] Deliberate arson was ruled out as a cause almost immediately by investigators, as interviews of some personnel who had been in the building just 20 minutes before the first fire alarm reported nothing out of the ordinary.

[2] On the morning of the National Archives Fire, a very small number of U.S. Navy, Coast Guard, and Marine Corps records were out of their normal file area, being worked on as active requests by employees of the National Archives and Records Administration who maintained their offices on the 6th floor of the building.

The destroyed sixth floor of the NPRC also housed a security vault that contained high-profile and notable records of U.S. Navy and Marine Corps personnel.