In addition to being the main federal court building in the region, the Russell Building houses a U.S. Attorney’s Office and employees of the U.S. Marshals Service, HUD, Agriculture and GSA itself. Image: GSA
By: FEDweek StaffThe inspector general’s office at the GSA has issued a safety alert regarding a major federal building in Atlanta, the Richard B. Russell Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse, saying building occupants and visitors are “at risk of fire hazards or toxic exposure.”
The report says that in the course of an overall assessment of the building’s condition, auditors learned that the GSA’s Public Building Service “has been bypassing the Russell Building’s fire alarm system and monitoring service” by calling the monitoring company each business day to bypass monitoring from about 6 am to about 6 pm.
That results in “disabling both audible and visual notifications of the fire alarm system throughout the building, including the bells/horns, strobes, and fire alarm pull stations. In short, no alarms will sound if there is a fire or if someone pulls the alarm without manual intervention from the control panel,” it said.
“PBS on-site building management and the operations and maintenance contractor told us that this has been done at the request of Russell Building tenants, who have complained that fire alarm system deficiencies have triggered false alarms that disrupt court operations. They also told us that PBS has been bypassing the fire alarms and monitoring service in the Russell Building since at least 2015,” it said.
The IG added: “During our audit interviews, we also learned that a gas leak detection sensor in the Russell Building’s chiller room has been nonfunctional since March 2025. This sensor is critical for detecting refrigerant gas leaks, which, if left undetected, could result in toxic exposure or fire hazards.”
“Absent an active fire alarm system and monitoring service and functioning gas leak detection sensor, PBS cannot ensure prompt emergency response and timely building occupant notification in the event of a fire-related emergency or gas leak,” it said, calling for “immediate corrective action.” Because the report was in the nature of an alert, it did not include a management response.
In addition to being the main federal court building in the region, the Russell Building houses a U.S. Attorney’s Office and employees of the U.S. Marshals Service, HUD, Agriculture and GSA itself, the report said.
The findings mirror those of a report in June regarding the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building in New York City, also housing various federal agencies and several federal courts. In that report, the IG said the PBS did not fully comply with laws and its own policies governing fire protection, worker safety, and accessibility and did not notify those working there of those risks in a timely way.
The IG has issued numerous reports in recent years about health safety hazards and degraded physical conditions of individual buildings—including GSA’s own headquarters—and regarding federal buildings in general. In many cases those were attributed to years of maintenance that was inadequate or deferred altogether.
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