NFPA Journal - Summer 2021 - 96

Looking Back

FIRE INCIDENTS AND
OTHER NOTABLE EVENTS
FROM SAFETY HISTORY

NFPA.ORG/LOOKINGBACK
Learn more about the Beverly Hills Supper Club fire
from archival materials produced by NFPA.

THE BEVERLY HILLS SUPPER CLUB
FIRE | SOUTHGATE, KENTUCKY
By Caitlin Walker
t was a busy Saturday night at the
sprawling Beverly Hills Supper Club
in Southgate, Kentucky, on May 28,
1977. The club was packed with an
estimated 2,600 guests, including
about 1,200 people attending a show in the Cabaret
room. The night would end as one of the deadliest
fire events in the nation's history.
Around 8:45 p.m., employees noticed a fire in
an unoccupied function room. Staffers tried but
failed to extinguish the fire, and the fire department wasn't notified until about 10 to 15 minutes
after the fire was discovered. Facility management
ordered staff to evacuate all guests, and those in

THE NFPA LIBRARY AND ARCHIVE holds a rich collection of books, reports, and photographs
that document important moments in fire history. To provide better electronic access for researchers and to preserve our unique archival holdings, work has begun to digitize the files of the Fire
Record Department, the original NFPA department responsible for collecting and analyzing information and compiling statistics about key fires and other events. The incidents featured in " Looking
Back " are drawn from this collection and will eventually be part of NFPA's online archive. For information, visit nfpa.org/library.

AP/WIDE WORLD

DINNER
DISASTER

the Cabaret room were the
last to be notified. As they
made their way out, thick
smoke and flames quickly
filled the room, cutting
off two of its three exits.
Many patrons were trapped.
Every fire department in
the county responded to
the fire, which was brought
under control at around 2
a.m. Sunday morning. Complete extinguishment was
not achieved until Monday,
according to an NFPA case
study. The building was
destroyed, 164 people were
dead, and 70 were injured.
NFPA sent five specialists
to participate in a twoweek on-site investigation;
subsequent data collection
and analysis spanned five months. The team produced a report titled
" Reconstruction of a Tragedy: The Beverly Hills Supper Club Fire, "
which concluded that the fire's cause was most likely electrical. The
report listed several contributing factors, including overcrowding-
the mostly one-story restaurant and nightclub was built in 1937 and,
through a series of expansions, covered 1.5 acres and consisted of 18
function rooms designed to accommodate 1,000 guests-as well as
delayed discovery of the fire, delayed notification of guests and the fire
department, no evacuation plan or fire emergency procedures, inadequate exits, and no fire suppression and detection systems.
While many of the lessons learned from the fire echoed those of past
fires, it did trigger code changes. The 1981 edition of NFPA 101®, Life
Safety Code®, required new and existing assembly occupancies with
occupant loads exceeding 300 to have a fire alarm system with voice
messaging to notify occupants, and it required new assembly occupancies with occupant loads exceeding 300 to be sprinklered. In addition
to code changes, the fire was featured in sessions at NFPA annual
meetings and in NFPA publications. NFPA produced a case study and a
human behavior analysis of the fire, as well as an award-winning film,
The Beverly Hills Supper Club Fire: A Case for Code Enforcement.

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NFPA Journal - Summer 2021

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