University at Buffalo Law Library reopens after fire causes smoke

Daily Record (Rochester, NY), Sep 18, 2006 by Tara E. Buck

The Charles B. Sears Law Library at the University at Buffalo Law School is open for business after a fire caused smoke damage to many books in March 2005 and a leaky roof caused water damage to still more books this year in early August.

Like a Phoenix rising from the ashes, the library is continuing to serve this year's law students - and will on Wednesday host His Holiness the Dalai Lama - showing little evidence of the trials its librarians went through to save its materials and halt further damage.

"We've been debating as to whether we'll have locusts next," joked James G. Milles, associate dean for the school's Legal Information Services and director of the law library. "I figure it will be an earthquake or a tornado, something with earth or wind."

It was during one of every law school's busiest times of the year when a fire started in the student lounge area of O'Brian Hall on a Saturday morning in March 2005.

Officials have never figured out how the fire started, despite evidence from the scene being sent to Albany for analysis.

Few library materials were lost as a result of the fire, which did not actually spread to the library itself but did pour a great deal of soot throughout its second and first floors.

"We were very lucky because the fire was contained to that [lounge] side, so there was actual fire damage to the lounge and the classroom next to it," Milles explained, "but we had a lot of water damage because the firemen came in and sprayed water everywhere.

"The open space in the library [first floor] sort of acted as a chimney and all the soot came through this way and all the way up into the library. So, wet soot was dripping down the walls here and all over the place and, in particular, on the first two floors."

The result: Every single book had to be cleaned by hand.

"I don't know how many thousands of books that was," Milles said.

A restoration company, Buffalo-based Enviro-Care, used materials similar to those used to pick up animal fur from furniture to lift soot off of every book's spine and cover. A very low concentration of cleaning solvent was also used to wipe each book clean.

"The soot is acidic, and if the books had not been cleaned, it would have eventually destroyed the books," he said.

Emergency funding from the state helped the university to pay for the recovery process, which took about eight weeks to complete.

While the books were relatively safe, some equipment was lost, including printers and computer monitors that could not be cleaned.

Carpeting was replaced and the walls were re-painted, however the bulk of the restoration process was for asbestos removal. Asbestos in the building that became wet when the fire was extinguished had to be removed, and extensive vacuuming was required on the library's upper floors.

As a result, the library's operations were moved to other libraries and spaces throughout campus: the reference desk was set up at the Lockwood Memorial Library; the audio-visual department was set up in the school's courtroom.

While the library itself was not open to the public at that time, librarians did venture in two or three times a day to retrieve materials for students.

"We moved the books out of the areas where the asbestos abatement was going on, so we were able to get in and get what we needed," Milles said.

Fast forward to this August: As Western New York experienced great amounts of rainfall, the roof of the law library began to leak.

"We'd had problems with the roof leaking for a long time," Milles noted, "but the water just poured in through the fourth floor and into the third and second floors."

About 3,500 books sustained water damaged. Enviro-Care returned for more restorative work, but told officials they'd much rather deal with fire damage than that from a flood.

"Once books get wet, you have to almost immediately take care of them," he said. "They'll start to grow mold very quickly and, once a book grows mold, that mold spreads to other books."

A separate recovery company was called in to work specifically with the wet books, which were immediately scanned in to the library's computer system, packaged into boxes and loaded onto a refrigerated truck.

"You box up the books while they're wet, and they are put onto this freezer truck so by the time they arrive at the treatment site, they're frozen," Milles explained. "Then they do a vacuum, freeze- drying process. They don't even take the books out of the boxes, they put them into a system and it's like when an ice cube tray's ice evaporates. That [process] is sublimation: Water goes from frozen to vapor without melting in between."

The process took several weeks but the books, for the most part, were brought back to life. In fact, the same process also brought dirt and grime out to the books' surface, so in many cases the books ended up cleaner than they were before what Milles calls "the flood."

"Some weren't in good enough shape to recover, so we'll replace those," he said. "Volumes that are available will be replaced."