The fire began when a worker used a blowtorch to warm asphalt shingles being applied to a facade. He left before confirming that all spots had cooled. The three-alarm blaze spread through mock New York and New England streets, consuming the King Kong Encounter attraction and the iconic Courthouse Square from Back to the Future. Low water pressure in Universal's aging pipes hampered firefighting efforts; crews had to tap streams and lakes for water. It took 24 hours to extinguish the flames. Nine firefighters and a sheriff's deputy sustained minor injuries. Universal rebuilt King Kong as a 360-degree 3D experience and moved on. Or so it seemed.

Building 6197 held the master tapes of Universal Music Group's West Coast labels: Chess, Decca, MCA, Geffen, Interscope, A&M, Impulse! Records, and their subsidiaries. These weren't backup copies or digital transfers. They were the original recordings, the magnetic tapes that captured Muddy Waters in the studio, John Coltrane's breath between notes, Elton John's piano before anyone else heard it. A February 2020 court filing confirmed that master tapes from at least 19 artists had been damaged or destroyed, including Nirvana, R.E.M., Soundgarden, Sonic Youth, and Suzanne Vega. The New York Times listed potentially hundreds more.

Among the reported losses: the original recording of Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1968 sermon 'Remaining Awake During a Great Revolution,' delivered at Washington National Cathedral just weeks before his assassination. Session outtakes that never made it to albums. Unreleased recordings that artists themselves had forgotten about. Richard Carpenter discovered his tapes were gone only after repeatedly asking UMG about a reissue project. The band Soundgarden learned in 2015 that their Badmotorfinger masters had burned; they completed a remaster using a backup safety copy. For countless other recordings, no backup existed anywhere.

When the Times story broke in June 2019, five plaintiffs filed a class-action lawsuit against UMG: Steve Earle, the estates of Tupac Shakur and Tom Petty, and the bands Hole and Soundgarden. They claimed UMG had never told artists about the fire's true impact and had breached contracts by failing to secure the master tape collection. One by one, the plaintiffs dropped out. Hole left after UMG assured them their masters survived. Shakur and Earle withdrew upon learning their tapes were safe. Soundgarden followed in 2020. By April 2020, only Tom Petty's widow remained, and the lawsuit was ultimately dismissed.

The full truth may never be known. UMG's archivist Patrick Kraus claimed in 2019 that only 22 original masters by five artists had been confirmed lost, with backup copies found for each. But internal documents reviewed by the Times suggested the losses could be vastly larger. Some masters may have survived because they were being used for remastering projects at the time. Others may have been misidentified in UMG's records. What's certain is that the fire exposed the fragility of cultural heritage stored in corporate warehouses, the gap between what companies tell the public and what happens behind closed doors, and the irreversible cost when magnetic tape meets flame.