Beverly Hills Super Club Fire
We have covered some basic Fire Dynamics concepts to this point. The purpose of this assignment is to get you looking deeper at these concepts.
Use the textbook, the internet as well as professional journals, articles and other academically recognized sources to answer the following:
1. Research The Beverly Hills Super Club Fire
2. Give a history of the fire (location, impact, # of alarms, etc.)
3. What was the fire’s cause?
4. What fire dynamics were noted (heat release rate, heat transfer, flame spread, flashover, backdraft as well as any other concepts you would like to add)? This will require you to look ahead through the book for any other concepts.
5. What actions were taken by the fire companies that responded?
6. What became of the fire such as were NFPA, OSHA, State & Federal Laws changed?
4. BEVERLY HILLS SUPPER CLUB, MAY 28, 1977
Located in Kentucky just six miles south of Cincinnati, Ohio, the Beverly Hills Supper Club was a sprawling complex of banquet rooms and service areas that attracted the same entertainment acts one might find in Las Vegas or Atlantic City.
Accident Waiting to Happen
The owners of the club had added on to it in piecemeal fashion over the years with disregard to the current fire codes. The carpets and seat cushions they used were highly flammable and emitted toxic fumes when ignited. There were no fire doors at the tops of stairways. The architect who’d made most of the additions to the building was not licensed in the state of Kentucky. Much of the building utilized aluminum wiring, which, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, is a fire hazard. Many of the exit signs were not illuminated.
The Fire
The actual cause and origin of the fire is still under dispute. What is known as fact, however, is that as guests exited a wedding reception being held in the Zebra Room they complained to management that the room seemed unusually warm. The doors to the Zebra Room remained closed after all the guests had left, and a little before 9PM two waitresses entered the room to begin clearing the tables. They noticed smoke hovering just below the ceiling and alerted management. The first fire engine arrived at 9:04PM, while employees haplessly tried to extinguish the flames that had suddenly burst into the Zebra Room.
Walter Bailey, a teenage busboy who’d seen the fire, ran down the long corridor toward the main stage, the Cabaret Room, poking his head in various rooms along the way and shouting warnings. When he arrived at the Cabaret Room, the comedy team of Teter and McDonald were onstage warming up the crowd for headliner John Davidson. Bailey strode onstage, grabbed the microphone and alerted the crowd of the emergency situation. He pointed out the exits in the room and asked them to evacuate quickly but calmly. Some patrons immediately followed his instructions, but the majority of the audience thought that Bailey was part of the comedy act and remained seated. Two minutes later a fireball exploded into the Cabaret Room and panic ensued. The room was enveloped with thick smoke, and the crowd tripped over the maze of tables and chairs as they scrambled in search of the poorly lit exits. The club had no emergency lighting, and the thick black smoke (filled with toxic fumes) made it almost impossible to find alternative exits. Firefighters had difficulty gaining entry into the building because bodies were “stacked like cordwood” in front of the main entrance doors. In the end, 165 people lost their lives in what is considered the third deadliest nightclub fire in U.S. history.
The Aftermath
Richard Whitt of the Louisville Courier-Journal wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning exposé on the overcrowding and fire code violations of the Beverly Hills Supper Club. As a result of his writings, the Governor of Kentucky ordered a special investigation of the disaster. Several new state laws (which eventually were adopted nationwide) were enacted as a result, including the banning of aluminum wiring, mandatory emergency lighting in public venues as well as requiring non-toxic fabric coverings for seats and floors.