The 1973 NPRC Fire: What Burned, Who Was Affected, and How Records Get Reconstructed

Shortly after midnight on July 12, 1973, a fire was reported at the National Personnel Records Center's military personnel records building at 9700 Page Boulevard in St. Louis. Firefighters arrived 4 minutes and 20 seconds after the first alarm. Heat and smoke drove them off the burning sixth floor at 3:15 a.m. The National Archives writes that the fire burned out of control for 22 hours, and that it was July 16, nearly four and a half days after the first report, before the local fire department called it officially out. Forty-two fire districts took part. Investigators were never able to determine the source.

The National Archives states that the fire destroyed approximately 16-18 million Official Military Personnel Files. Salvage crews later recovered approximately 6.5 million burned and water damaged records, some of them dried in a vacuum chamber at McDonnell Douglas that had been built to simulate conditions for the Mercury and Gemini missions.

The National Archives publishes the affected groups as a two-row table, and both rows are narrower than the internet usually reports them.

Army: personnel discharged November 1, 1912 to January 1, 1960. Estimated loss, 80 percent. Air Force: personnel discharged September 25, 1947 to January 1, 1964, with names alphabetically after Hubbard, James E. Estimated loss, 75 percent.

Two details do most of the damage when they get dropped. The Army cutoff is January 1, 1960, not 1964; the span running to 1964 is the combined Army and Air Force range, and treating it as the Army range is the most common error on this subject. And the Air Force cut is a person, not a letter. NARA's own locations chart splits that same period into a HUBBARD thru Z line carrying the fire note and an A thru HUBBARD line without it, so a reader actually named Hubbard has to check where they fall against James E. rather than against the letter H.

The VA adds one qualifier to the Army row that the NARA page does not carry: the fire didn't involve records for retirees and Reservists who were alive on July 12, 1973. The VA also paraphrases the Air Force cut more loosely, as surnames beginning with Hubbard and running through the end of the alphabet. NA Form 13075, the questionnaire NARA sends when it cannot locate a record, gives the Army range as November 1, 1912 to December 31, 1959 and the Air Force group as veterans discharged, deceased or retired before January 1, 1964 whose names come alphabetically after Hubbard, James E. Anybody sitting within a few weeks of an edge should assume they are inside it.

No, and the National Archives says it in one sentence: no duplicate copies of these records were ever maintained, nor were microfilm copies produced, neither were any indexes created prior to the fire.

That has a consequence people ask about constantly. Because no index existed, a complete listing of the records that were lost is not available. Nobody at NARA can look up a name and confirm in advance that a specific file burned. The way a veteran finds out is by requesting the record and seeing what comes back.

There is one real exception to the loss, and it helps. Millions of documents had been lent to the Department of Veterans Affairs before the fire, usually because the VA had pulled them to work a claim. Those copies were not in the building. Certain records were also carried out during the fire for safekeeping: the center's operating records, a computer index for a major portion of its holdings, and more than 100,000 reels of morning reports covering the Army from 1912 to 1959 and the Air Force from 1947 to 1959. Those reels became one of the main tools for putting service back together.

On July 23, 1973 the government issued a Federal Property Management Regulations Bulletin, FPMR B-39, halting federal agencies from disposing of records that might be useful in documenting military service. What survived because of that order is what reconstruction runs on.

The National Archives names the more important sources it uses to supplement damaged files: Veterans Administration claims files, individual state records, Multiple Name Pay Vouchers from the Adjutant General's Office, Selective Service System registration records, pay records from the Government Accounting Office, and medical records from military hospitals, entrance and separation x-rays and organizational records. That is the list. Anything not on it is somebody else's guess.

Its St. Louis holdings page puts numbers on a few of them. A collection of 19 million Final Pay Vouchers, giving name, service number, and dates and character of service. 7.8 million records of individual hospital and treatment facility admissions created by the Army Surgeon General's Office. Army morning reports and unit rosters from November 1, 1912 to 1974, with the note that the 1944 to 1946 rosters were destroyed. Air Force morning reports from September 1947 to June 30, 1966. Navy muster rolls from 1939 to 1946. Officer pay cards from both world wars.

Whatever gets rebuilt is filed apart from the original holdings. NPRC created a B registry file, for Burned, to index the 6.5 million recovered records, and in April 1974 an R registry file, for Reconstructed, where newly rebuilt records are kept.

Request the record the ordinary way first, because the ordinary way is free. eVetRecs online at vetrecs.archives.gov, or Standard Form 180 by mail or fax. The National Archives asks anyone who suspects their records were involved in the 1973 fire to add three details to the request: place of discharge, last unit of assignment, and place of entry into the service if known.

When the record cannot be found, forms come back instead of a refusal. NA Form 13075, Questionnaire About Military Service, is the one sent when a record was lost in the fire or cannot be located. The form says the information may help locate the record if it is available, or, if the record is not available, may enable the center to make use of various alternate sources to reconstruct some of the basic service record data. It asks for the completed page within 30 days and states that a request will be closed without further reply if nothing arrives.

Medical data runs on a form of its own, and it asks for far more detail than the personnel questionnaire does. NA Form 13055, Request for Information Needed to Reconstruct Medical Data, opens by telling the requester that the medical record needed to answer the request is not on file at the center, and that if the record had been there on July 12, 1973 it would have been in the area that suffered the most damage in the fire. It asks for the nature of the illness, injury or treatment, the treatment dates, whether the care was inpatient or outpatient, the specific unit down to company, battalion, regiment, squadron, group or wing, and the name and location of the facility. Months matter: the form states outright that the year alone is not enough, and asks for the season and year if the month is unknown.

For anyone with a VA disability compensation claim, the VA runs this itself and publishes the steps. It says it submits a specific request to NPRC for any additional service records they may have or can find, that NPRC may reach out to other government agencies, and that they may try to reconstruct portions of your service treatment records by reviewing unit records, morning reports, and hospital admission records from the surgeon general's office. NA Form 13055 is the form the VA uses as its request. The VA also asks for supplemental records: statements from service medical personnel, certified statements from fellow service members who witnessed an injury or illness, military accident and police reports, examination reports from employment or insurance, letters or photographs from the time in service, prescription records, and copies of any treatment records from private hospitals, clinics or doctors who provided care during service or shortly after separation.

NA Form 13055 also points at the VA before it points anywhere else. Some medical records were transferred to the VA before the 1973 fire, obtained to process a claim based on a service-connected injury or illness, and the form says that if you believe such a claim was filed before July 1973 you should request the medical record by calling your nearest VA facility at 1-800-827-1000.

A reconstructed record is not the original, and the National Archives does not pretend otherwise. NA Form 13055 states that the alternate sources usually show only dates of treatment or hospitalization and rarely show diagnosis or treatment given. A pay voucher proves somebody was paid on a date. A morning report proves a unit accounted for them. Neither one records what a doctor thought.

Some service cannot be reconstructed at all. No index of the losses exists, the pay and organizational records were never built to carry clinical detail, and where no alternate source covers a period, the period stays blank. NARA counts what it recovered. It does not claim to have restored the files.

Knowing that in advance is worth something, because a thin reconstruction is a normal outcome for this cohort and it says nothing about the person whose name is on it. The paper burned in a building in Missouri in 1973.