The books that survived the fire were in piles where they’d fallen or jammed with their sticky backs together on the shelves. Olivia Primanis, the book conservator, told Wyman Jones that they had to move quickly and freeze the books because mold spores begin to bloom within forty-eight hours after being activated by water. If the books got moldy, they would be unsalvageable. That meant the staff would have to pack, move, and store seven hundred thousand damaged books somewhere cold before mold erupted.
