The National Archives or the National Personnel Records Center
(NPRC) located in Saint Louis Missouri is the storage facility for all Official
Military Personnel File Records (OMPF). This facility was built in 1956 at a
cost of $12.5 million in 1956, the six-story rectangular buildings is on 70
acres. At its opening they housed 38 million military personnel records and by
1973 it held over 52 million records with an additional 500,000 cubic feet of
unit records.
At about 12:16 am July 12, 1973 the local fire department
was dispatched to NPRC, 9700 Page Boulevard to a burning 6th floor building,
the firefighters reached the fire but were forced to withdraw due to the heat
and smoke, they would have to try to combat the flames by massive quantities of
water into the building. The fire burned
out of control for 22 hours. It would take until July 16th to officially
say the fire was out. Although there was water damage throughout the building,
the heaviest was on the 5th floor.
A small number of
Navy & Marine Corps plus Coast Guard records were destroyed due to files
being out of their filed place. The exact number of Navy & Marine Corps
records destroyed is unknown, Army Personnel discharged November 1, 1912 to
January 1, 1960 80% destroyed, Air Force Personnel discharged September 25,
1947 to January 1, 1964 (with names alphabetically after Hubbard, James
E.) 75% destroyed. No microfilm or
duplicate copies or indexes was ever created.
If you have questions about your families military records, send me an email and I will help in your search for their records.
