Concur with most so far. Stay away from basements unless you have absolutely no other choice. A small mitigation may be if the facility is built into a hillside -- you can use the area closest to the hill for storage and since the other side of the floor would be open to the outside, you have a way to hopefully allow water to run out of the space if something bad happened.

I can't tell you how many times I have walked into a file room and been horrified by its placement. Years ago, a company I worked for had created a file room on the 15th floor of the building they were in. The shelving was faced out to the windows. I asked someone if they knew what would happen if one of the windows broke. They had never thought it over. I asked them how they entered the building. They said through the revolving door. I asked them if they ever had walked by the handicapped (standard) door when it was open. "Oh yes, I'm always amazed at how the nice cold air blows out that door so forcefully in the summer when it is open." I asked her if she knew what "positive air pressure" was. I explained to her that many modern office buildings maintain a positive air pressure inside so that outside air (hot or cold) doesn't enter the building when a door opens. It also keeps out unfiltered air. Unfortunately, that means that a busted window could
 create a suction as the air inside zooms out the hole in the window. In addition, depending upon the direction of the wind and the flows around the building, suction can be created in low pressure zones by prevailing winds. That's happened several times when windows have broken on the Sears Tower in Chicago. Some lawyer usually gets his desk and credenza contents vacuumed out into the Loop.

I've also seen a number of file rooms in the "core" of buildings below grade, but not the lowest grade. In one instance, the car park surrounded the file room. In another the 12 inch pipe that handled the storm runoff from the plaza above ran through the room. In yet another, a glycol cooling line (and return hot glycol line) ran through the space. Cheap space, but all bad ideas.

If you have to go underground, it may be best to consider a worked out mine as some companies use.

 
Patrick Cunningham, CRM, FAI
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