There are posts on social media claiming that if there is a fire at one of the Yale University libraries, all the oxygen is removed from the building to kill everyone inside to protect the rare books. This claim is partly false: representatives of the library have confirmed that fire-suppressing gases, which lower oxygen levels but are still safe for humans, will only be released in the book stacks.
The posts (here, here, here) show a screenshot of a tweet here , with a photo from the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. ‘Fun fact of this library: if a fire breaks out in the library, all the oxygen leaves the building killing everyone to protect the rare books,’ it says.
More footage from within the library can be viewed in a YouTube video shared by the library.
Beinecke Library communications director Michael Morand (here) told Reuters in an email: “Like many cultural heritage institutions, this library uses a fire-fighting system that is clean for people.” Cleaners are gases that suppress the fire but are safe for humans (www.fssa.net/industryfaqs).
In an interview with Yale News in 2010, visible here, Stephen Jones, the then head of access services at the Beinecke Library, explained this system in more detail. He said: “They do lower the percentage of oxygen, but that’s not enough to kill librarians.” oxygen, bit.ly/2NupYxU, here) and Inergen (which lowers the oxygen concentration while still maintaining a breathable atmosphere), in the book stacks to stop the combustion process and thus the spread of the fire.
After the fire suppression system was revamped in 2016, Morland (here, here) told Yale Alumni Magazine: “Myths about oxygen suction have been overestimated”. The article says that the building is equipped to release a fire safe for people, but only in the stacks and once everyone is gone (here).
The author of the original tweet corrected his previous statement in a follow-up tweet containing the Yale News article, as seen here .
VERDICT
Partly false. In the event of a fire in the Beinecke Library at Yale University, a fire-suppressing gas, which lowers oxygen levels but is safe for humans, is released only in the book stacks.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work here.