Where does the story the Andromeda Strain take place?

The Andromeda Strain is set in the artificial environment of the underground Wildfire Laboratory. Ironically, this manmade environment is inhospitable to man. The character of Dr. Jeremy Stone has designed the high-tech Wildfire Lab to isolate and control microscopic biological life forms in the event of an outbreak. Chillingly, it has a similar effect on human beings. The clinical, sterile environment has the effect of isolating and controlling the human scientists who reside within the lab during the Andromeda crisis. Dr. Mark Hall, the most human of the characters, becomes meek and submissive to computer suggestions after the automated decontamination process disorients and weakens him. The decontamination procedures that define the environment at Wildfire seem like an attempt to purify man of his humanity. As the scientists descend through the five levels of this subterranean laboratory, they are exterminated, inoculated, and ex-foliated until Jeremy Stone deems them clean enough to enter the top-secret, ultra-sensitive heart of his operation, Level V.

Blue Level V is where the majority of the action is set. The core of the building is an amazing glass and steel contraption that seals Andromeda, the Scoop Satellite, and the contaminated survivors of Piedmont away from the scientists. The scientific team members work in a ring of rooms surrounding the central core. Each room has a glass window which looks into the core. All instruments are operated remotely by the scientists, using metallic hands and glove boxes to avoid exposure to Andromeda. In the physical examination room inside the core, four space suits stand ready for occupation by the scientists, who can crawl through a tunnel into the suit and thereby enter the core without breathing the air. In the event of emergency, the scientists would be sealed in the suits, unable to return to the decontaminated outer perimeter. Emergency doors are poised to seal off every section in case of an outbreak, and the climactic scene is driven by Mark Hall's need to reach a fail-safe button in a sealed-off section. The Wildfire Laboratory embodies the author's vision of mankind enslaved by technology, and provides an eerie, sterile, and inhuman backdrop to the events of the story.