A fire broke out Friday morning at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building where numerous Administration staff work next to the White House.
No injuries were reported. DC Fire and Emergency Medical Services posted on Twitter around 8am that a defective cooling motor in the basement was to blame.
An email had been sent to White House staff in the building Friday morning stating, “URGENT: EVACUATION” along with an order to leave the building at the direction of emergency officers. By 8:35am, the White House grounds had returned to relative calm.
Construction was completed on the Eisenhower Executive Building in 1888. It houses numerous White House staffers and agencies, including the Office of the Vice President. No word, however, whether Vice President Harris, who’d traveled to Miami on Thursday for a climate change summit, was among those evacuated from the Washington DC building on Friday.
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the National Security Council also work out of the Executive Building.
A 2007 fire at the Executive Building damaged then-Vice President Cheney’s ceremonial suite of offices and led to the evacuation of 1,000 federal workers, including a Marine who suffered cuts after smashing a fifth-floor window to escape from the smoke and had to be rescued from the ledge.
