time September 16, 2019Lawmakers have known about the
growing risk since the 1940s but have
taken until now to act. In 2016, an offi-
cial report warned of a “substantial and
growing risk [of a] single, catastrophic
event.” But lawmakers didn’t vote to va-
cate the building until 2018. Even then,
they dragged their feet, with Brexit eat-
ing up parliamentary time.
It took a fire nearly destroying the
850-year-old Notre Dame cathedral in
Paris in April to instill a sense of urgency.
For Parisians, that blaze was so devastat-
ing because of Notre Dame’s central role
in French literature, history and religion.
In the British capital there is no equiva-
lent place of worship; the Houses of Par-
liament are the closest any building comes
to encasing in stone the history and iden-
tity of the nation. On May 9, three weeks
after the last embers in Paris were extin-
guished, U.K. lawmakers voted to begin
setting up an independent body to totally
evacuate and refurbish Parliament.
Now, as the Brexit crisis ramps up,
the building is at a breaking point. On
Aug. 28, Prime Minister Boris Johnson
announced plans to effectively lock law-
makers out of Parliament to potentially
force a “no deal” Brexit on Oct. 31, de-
spite complaints that such a move would
be unconstitutional. And on Sept. 3, John-
son said he would try to call an early elec-
tion after lawmakers moved to thwart
his plans. Amid the chaos, the bill to re-
store Parliament is under threat. “If we
have a general election and it doesn’t get
through before, that would be a problem,”
says Mark Tami, a lawmaker who sits on
the restoration board. “We would have to
start all over again.”
Occupying mOre than a million
square feet on the north bank of the River
Thames, the Palace of Westminster has
been the seat of the British government
since 1016, though the majority of today’s
palace dates from the Victorian era. It has
more than 1,100 rooms, including both
chambers of Parliament, lawmakers’ of-
fices, libraries and pubs. It is the home of
archives and art chronicling the last mil-
lennium of British history. In one form or
another, it has survived political crises,
terrorist attacks and two major fires. But
take a trip through its humid basement,
and its decrepit state is obvious.
In a hard hat and a high-visibility vest,
Piper leads the way through the subterra-
nean maze. Beside him, a large chunk of
plaster has crumbled off the wall, reveal-
ing dusty brickwork. Piper knows the inti-
macies of the building better than anyone,
and remembers the shock of Notre Dame
catching fire in April. “That could have so
easily been this building,” he says. “The
amount of loss that could happen in the
space of a few minutes.. .” He trails off.
Occasionally, fire does break out. A
couple of years ago, Piper was walking
down a deserted passage when he smelled
burning: an old electrical system had
overheated behind a panel. He raised the
alarm, narrowly averting a disaster. An-
other time, in 2016, a malfunctioning light
set fire to a section of the roof. Contractors
working on scaffolding nearby spotted it
with moments to spare. “That was a real
close call for us,” Piper says.
The home of British democracy
has burned before, if you go back far
enough. On the evening of Oct. 16, 1834,
a catastrophic fire struck the old Parlia-
ment building, which dated back to the
11th century. Almost all of the complex
was destroyed. “People think of these
huge buildings as integral to their psycho-
logical landscape,” says Caroline Shenton,
author of The Day Parliament Burned
Down, a history of the 1834 blaze. “To see
them become so vulnerable so quickly is
intensely shocking.”
The Palace of Westminster was soon
rebuilt, bigger and grander than before.
But the seeds of today’s problems were
sown during construction, when David
Boswell Reid, a 19th century pioneer of
air-conditioning, was brought in to alter
the designs. He added dozens of empty
shafts, stretching from the basement to
the roof, and spanning each ceiling and
the floor above it. But the primitive air-
conditioning system never really func-
tioned properly. Later, workers used these
invisible spaces to conceal new pipes and
wires; over the years, records of exactly
what each did were lost. New utilities
were laid over defunct ones, and they
were sprayed with carcinogenic asbestos
during the 1950s when it was in vogue as
a fire suppressant.
If left unchecked, it’s through these
spaces that experts now fear a fire could
spread rapidly. It’s not much of a stretch:
in June 2018, the Glasgow School of Art in
Scotland, which had been designed withsimilar ventilation shafts, burned down in
a matter of minutes. (Nobody was killed.)
Much of the task of renovating Parlia-
ment, officials say, will be stripping and
compartmentalizing these voids.
Ironically, for the duration of the work,
the danger of fire will only be heightened.
It’s not hard to imagine a spark from tem-
porary electrical work setting the build-
ing alight. Both the Glasgow and Notre
Dame fires began during restoration. (In-
vestigations into the causes of both fires
are ongoing.) “We are very conscious that
the risk of fire will, for some period, in-
crease,” Piper says. To mitigate that risk,
a fire-safety team will have to approve
all restoration work. But it won’t be easy
to avoid a mistake. “Taking shortcuts is
part of human nature,” says Liz Peace, the
chair of the restoration board.
Brits don’t need to imagine the devas-
tation. In June 2017, fire engulfed Gren-
fell Tower, a 24-story public housingWorld