Beale Memorial Library improves fire extinguishers protecting Kern’s rarest historical records | News

It didn’t happen, but for a few years there has been a real concern it could after an annual inspection identified a problem with the rooms’ Halon-type waterless fire suppression system.

After money finally became available to overhaul the gas-based fire extinguisher, work began early this year to replace the facility’s museum-grade tanks, chemicals and piping designed to put out blazes without damaging valuable materials the way water-based sprinklers would.

The project stopped after certain components proved hard to get, but in October work resumed that required closing access to a free resource that’s usually open to the public from 1 to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. Expectations are now that the two rooms will reopen in January.

“We want to be able to protect as best we can,” said the library’s business manager, Mark Lewis. “It’s really one-of-a-kind items. It’s historical. It’s that if they were gone we would never get them back.”

To the best he’s been able to determine, gas was leaking from the original fire suppression system installed when the Beale opened more than 30 years ago. That meant that if fire had entered, there was some question as to whether enough chemical fire retardant was on hand to put out the blaze completely before it damaged physical pieces of local history.

Lewis estimated the new system, which uses a different kind of chemical to serve the same purpose, will cost just less than $115,000.

The system serves both facilities: the roughly 1,000-square-foot local history room and the vault, which Lewis said measures about 200 square feet.

Beale librarian Lynne Kemmer said the new system will provide better protection for an invaluable archive that regularly attracts researchers ranging from college students to journalists to locals trying to uncover information about long-lost relatives.

“It’s absolutely integral to our ability to be able to provide information to community members about Kern County,” she said, “and the documents need to be protected, because many of them are one of a kind. We are working on digitizing as much as we can, but to have the hard copy of the documents is important … to preserve for future generations.”

Kemmer offered a rundown of the kind of materials protected by the fire suppression system. Some of the oldest are publications, in microfiche and actual printed materials, going back more than a century. They include  newspapers including The Bakersfield Californian and its predecessors, as well as newsletters and legal publications containing information on marriages, obituaries and property transactions.

There are also rare books written by local authors, as well as books long out of print about Kern County people, places and communities, including Native American tribes that inhabited the area.

Records of notable events such as earthquakes share the shelves, binders and cabinets, along with photos, documents and handwritten oral histories. Kemmer noted the vault is temperature- and humidity-controlled.

People continue to show great interest in the materials, she said, and library staff are happy to help them find what they’re looking for.

“It’s really interesting working in the local history room because I’ve learned a lot about Kern County, people’s histories, family histories, the histories of the different communities,” Kemmer said, adding users of the facility are not just teenagers stopping in because of an assignment. For example, lots of people come in to see who used to own their home, she said.

“It’s all kind of people — students and adults alike,” she said.