Today JumpStart International toured three sites with the chief engineer and a project engineer of the Ministry of Culture, which is responsible for theatres, television, radio, libraries, etc., throughout Iraq.

JumpStart will begin work on one of the projects tomorrow morning and will probably start work on another 1-2 projects in the next 10 days with the Ministry of Culture.

We saw one site that had been mostly destroyed by the looting and burning in Baghdad directly after the city fell; one site that had been looted and burned but where the structure is intact; and one site that had simply been looted and only partially burned. There are literally thousands of such sites throughout the city, but the three that they took us to are ones they consider important cultural centers:

1. The National Cinema complex, which includes a 600+ seat theatrical/movie theatre and a 10 story office building that previously contained the offices of the film industry and other theatrical productions. The entire ten-story building will need to be completely cleared, cleaned, demolished and reconstructed. The structural damage due to the fire is evident throughout, with floors and ceilings caved away in many areas throughout. The theatre, which is relatively preserved inside, will unfortunately need to be completely demolished as well, because the roof of the superstructure is caving in. We will save the seats and materials, but it is such a tragedy. I would estimate that the entire size of the complex is roughly 18,000 s (180,000 sq ft), possibly as much as 28,000 sq meters. The first and foremost issue in cleaning and clearing this structure is safety; it will be difficult to work in parts of the damaged structure. Nonetheless, the work needs to be done, and we hope to begin work on this project in ten days or so. For the clearing and cleaning part, this work will probably take between 50-150 workers and the constant use of a Tower Crane, possibly two. We will need the CPA to give us access to these cranes, and we'll likely need to take the building down floor by floor, using as many as ten welders and many manual laborers and operators.

2. The Baghdad Music & Ballet Conservatory. About 250 students study music and ballet here, both boys and girls. The school includes both a primary and a secondary school. The work on this project is more of a finishing nature, except for the construction of a brick and steel fence, which is considered absolutely necessary because of a riot that took place outside the CPA about 2 weeks ago (ex-Iraqi soldiers rioting ostensibly because they didn't receive the back pay they were expecting). The school was overrun with rioters and a security guard was injured but fortunately no-one was killed. The fence is considered the first priority, because parents are very afraid for the continued safety of the children, and are withdrawing their students from the school en masse because of the lack of a fence, which was destroyed. JumpStart does not normally consider projects like this, because we are too small to be able to fund the capital construction expenses, but we may be able to work with the Ministry of Culture on this if the budget is small. It would likely employ about 15-25 bricklayers and helpers, good deal of the expense being materials.

3. The National Library. Another unspeakable tragedy, the National Library was looted and its contents destroyed by fire. Although the structure is intact, the entire inside of the structure needs to be cleared of rubble, cleaned, etc. Three floors of approximately 4,000 sq meters each, for a total of 12,000 sq meters (120,000 sq feet (possibly less)), JumpStart will begin work on this project Sunday, initially with 30 workers, growing as needed. This is a straightforward clearing & cleaning project, not dangerous. It's amazing that it is six months after the wabeen started.

I met with the Minister of the Ministry of Culture, Mr. Al-Jazairi, and he approved of the project at the National Library. We hope to begin additional projects with them shortly.

Work begins on clearing National Library.

Today at 7AM the first 20 workers began clearing the National Library & Archives building (16 workers, 3 supervisors, 1 foreman). Provided with gloves, shovels, wheelbarrows & hammers, much progress was evident in only a few hours of work... but it's a large amount of space, so the work may take as much as a month, especially if some repainting or other finishing work is begun.

Tomorrow, over 30 workers will be on-site. The Ministry of Culture will be actually recreating the National Library's Archives at the ornate and undamaged building which was previously the Army Officer's Club in Al-Aadamiya (sp). The existing structure, which is relatively undamaged, will serve other purposes for the Ministry of Culture.

Some before and after pictures from the National Library:

The National Library project was completed after a month and a day of clearance and cleaning work with 13 large dump trucks of ash and plaster being carted away from the site on Friday, November 21.

The library has many halls and offices now ready for re-use and rebuilding. Structurally, the building is sound despite the tremendous loss of valuable books, records, microfiche and building materials.

A huge pile of scrap metal sits behind the National Library waiting to be sold by the Ministry of Culture.

The front face of the building was scraped using a sander to clean the smoke damage.

See the "before" pictures from 10/27!

The site foreman and the library's accountant.  

After clearance...

The stairway after clearance and smoke damage cleaning...