Hands-on inspector

NFPA Journal, Sep/Oct 1999 by Touger, Hallie Ephron

Meticulous and thorough, Lydia Butterworth is one of the engineers responsible for fire safety at the Smithsonian.

Keeping the national treasures in the Smithsonian Institution safe from fire damage is a big responsibility, and Lydia Butterworth takes her job very seriously. If inspecting a building means crawling through a tunnel or down a hole, she doesn't hesitate to do it.

How did you end up in fire protection?

It was a fluke, really. I worked as a fire department dispatcher in high school. When I went to the University of Maryland and realized I wasn't going to be an electrical engineer or a physicist, I looked for something else interesting. I found the fire protection engineering curriculum and was convinced.

Were your first fire protection jobs with NFPA and the Navy good learning experiences?

Working for NFPA is the best opportunity to meet the people who write the codes and who are really involved. Working for the Navy, you get a variety of occupancies to deal with. You might do an office building one day and an aircraft hangar the next.

What does your work at the Smithsonian involve?

I'm in the fire and safety group, which reviews new projects-anything from building a high-rise to changing an exhibit. It could be minor work, or it could be huge. We do acceptance testing, inspections, and all the fire protection reviews. We also do what they call "wall-to-wall inspections" each year.

I learn a lot by inspection. Contractors who don't know me sometimes think, "She'll never look there." But I'm famous for checking anywhere. If I have to look above a ceiling or inside the walls, crawl in a tunnel or down a hole, I'll do it.

What are some of the unique fire protection challenges at the Smithsonian?

I've pretty much focused on the Natural History Building. We have a lot of unusual collections, such as specimens of fish stored in alcohol. And the building is historic, so we have to maintain its historic fabric. We have to deal with handicapped accessibility, too. Sometimes, we even put new buildings inside old buildings.

Lately, I've overseen a lot of construction. We just built a high-rise office building and another building that houses an IMAX theater and a restaurant. We deal with more than just the standard museum kinds of things. Our goal is to sprinkler all our buildings. The Natural History Building isn't fully sprinklered yet-it takes a while to get it done.

You're also a Maryland fire commissioner.

I'm in my second term. We're responsible for fire code adoption and hearing appeals, and we recently adopted a fire code that includes NFPA 1, Fire Prevention Code. The state of Maryland tries to put together groups of people that disagree on issues so they can reach consensus. For instance, we just adopted rules for Christmas trees, and the work was done by a committee of growers, arborists, fire officials, and commissioners.