Around 5 p.m. on April 8, 2024, an electrical fire tore through the archaeology office and adjacent lab at Montpelier, the Virginia plantation that once belonged to United States President James Madison and a National Trust Historic Site. Inside the retrofitted 1980s classroom trailer that served as a lab were thousands of artifacts that had been unearthed on the property over 30 years of excavations—artifacts that Matt Reeves, director of archaeology and landscape restoration at Montpelier, calls “irreplaceable.”
It took 30 firefighters about four hours to put out the flames. No one was hurt—staff had already left for the day when the blaze broke out—and the bulk of the artifacts were in containers and survived. However, the fire, smoke and water damage was extensive,and rendered both the office and the lab uninhabitable.
With assistance from the fire department, Reeves was able to remove the artifacts and paperwork from the burn site that same night, which was critical. From there, it was a race against time to dry all the items before mold had a chance to set in. Reeves and his staff then spent the next few months sorting through and cataloging containers full of items to assess the damage and transferring them to new bags and boxes, all while wearing donned Tyvek suits, respirators, gloves, masks and goggles to protect them from the toxic soot that covered everything. Archaeology staff are still reconserving artifacts, reorganizing study collection, and as of the writing of this article are finally able to get back to tasks set aside last April.
