Fire damages C-SPAN, MSNBC studios, forces ‘Fox News Sunday’ relocation

A fire Sunday morning in Northwest Washington, D.C., damaged studios for C-SPAN and MNSBC, and forced “Fox News Sunday” to relocate its broadcast to a local affiliate’s studio.

D.C. Fire and EMS tweeted that an electrical fire broke out in the 8th floor television studio at 400 N. Capitol St. but nobody was injured.

Steve Scully, the political editor for C-SPAN, tweeted shortly after 7 a.m. that  the C-SPAN studios sustained “extensive damage,” and MSNBC’s studio took on “extensive smoke and water damage.”

Update Box Alarm 400 North Capitol St NW. #DCsBravest have extinguished an electrical fire in an 8th floor TV studio. No injuries reported.,Working on smoke removal. pic.twitter.com/Li7C0EmJIR

— DC Fire and EMS (@dcfireems) January 20, 2019

The latest ⁦@cspanwj⁩ @cspan extensive damage on 8th floor of 400 North CAPITOL. ⁦@FoxNewsSunday⁩ moved to WTTG Fox 5. ⁦@MSNBC⁩ studios with extensive smoke and water damage due to electrical fire this am pic.twitter.com/0JBhuPgq3q

— Steve Scully (@SteveScully) January 20, 2019

{mosads}”Fox News Sunday” anchor Chris Wallace addressed the fire at the outset of Sunday’s program.

“If things look a little bit different here today that’s because of the fact that we had a fire — yes, a fire — in our building on North Capitol Street, and so we’re over at our wonderful affiliate WTTG,” Wallace said.

“We may not have a lot of the bells and whistles we normally have, but just take a little time travel and pretend you’re back in the 1950s and you’ll feel very comfortable about that,” he joked.

Wallace noted the shift in venue multiple times throughout the broadcast. He thanked Vice President Pence for accommodating the change in location for his interview, and noted at one point that they did not have a video clip of Pence’s remarks last week about ISIS.

Fox News said that its studios did not sustain damage as they are not located on the eighth floor, but that its employees were evacuated during the fire. As a result, “Fox News Sunday” and “Mediabuzz” with Howard Kurtz were relocated to the local affiliate’s studio.

C-SPAN tweeted about 11 a.m. that it had returned to normal operations.

.@cspan operations including live @cspanwj and @cspanradio were interrupted this morning by an emergency alarm. @dcfireems extinguished an electrical fire 2 floors above our studio . All C-SPAN employees are safe and we’ve returned to normal program operations. pic.twitter.com/cboBsP0cyK

— CSPAN (@cspan) January 20, 2019

In a note to staffers, NBC News Washington bureau chief Ken Strickland said all of the network’s operations in the building will be relocated to its Washington, D.C., bureau for the next few days as a result of damage from the fire.

Updated at 7:31 p.m.