SOUTHGATE - After 20 years, the numbers still sear the imagination: 165 killed, 164 injured in the region's deadliest blaze ever.
What can't be counted are the lives saved because of the Beverly Hills Supper Club fire two decades ago Wednesday.
The flames that engulfed the Northern Kentucky entertainment palace on May 28, 1977, immolated its imposing structure and left an indelible scar on the life of the region. If you were living in the Cincinnati area that night, you likely can recall the moment you heard about the catastrophe at the Southgate nightspot that once billed itself as "the showplace of the nation.''
The death toll from the fire ranks it among the nation's most ghastly disasters, comparable to the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building, which claimed 168 lives.
But the blaze wrought changes that affect nearly every American. Court dockets across the country still clog with lawsuits modeled after Beverly Hills litigation. Studies of the disaster have expanded professional insights into panic behavior and helped to refine psychological treatment of trauma victims. Safety reforms that rose from the Beverly Hills ashes accelerated costs of housing and business construction throughout the country, and may even have saved your life.
The legacy lives in the lessons learned.
Beverly Hills remains the second-deadliest nightclub fire in U.S. history, eclipsed only by 491 fatalities in the 1942 blaze at the Cocoanut Grove in Boston. That no inferno of its kind and scope has darkened the United States during the past 20 years testifies to changes the fire helped to forge.
"Sometimes the one good thing that comes out of a tragedy like Beverly Hills is that we learn something,'' said Bob Harrington, vice president of technical services and public health for the National Restaurant Association. "Every time you walk into a public building today, you can feel safer than you did 20 years ago.''
Perhaps the most demonstrable change occurred after the Beverly Hills fire was blamed on defective aluminum wiring. The finding helped galvanize a widespread industry renunciation in favor of copper alternatives for internal electrical systems.
"Aluminum wiring, it's not heard of today,'' Mr. Harrington said.
Improvements in fire-protection engineering since the fire include an extensive shift from mechanical to electronic alarm systems, better management of electrical consumption to prevent overheating, and detectors replete with redundant systems.
The safety reappraisal fueled by Beverly Hills continues, he said.
"Fire safety is evolutionary, not revolutionary,'' Mr. Harrington said. "Today, you have better construction in general, better materials, better ventilation, better lighting.''
Buildings today are designed with a keener eye toward crowd behavior. In modern auditoriums and movie theaters, for example, aisles widen as they approach exits to accommodate emergency congestion.
The blaze also detonated a boom in the design and production of emergency signs, an industry whose innovations continue.
"The new trend is floor-level signage,'' Mr. Harrington said. "What do you tell people to do in a fire? Get down on the floor. Where are most exit signs mounted? Above the door, where the smoke is rising.''
But the myriad of safety improvements has come at a steep cost to business owners. Even so, Mr. Harrington said, proprietors who exceed safety standards can hope not only for insulation from a disaster, but from extensive liability should a disaster occur.
"Costs of construction have gotten higher, no doubt about it,'' Mr. Harrington said. "But you have to weigh that against the explosion in liability judgments.''
The Beverly Hills lawsuits were a prime catalyst in that explosion by creating a prototype for modern mass-injury cases. Its then-innovative merger of separate suits into a single class action has become standard practice in such cases, generating an unprecedented volume of litigation and lavish judgments.
Acting for the plaintiffs, Cincinnati attorney Stanley M. Chesley began his ascent toward international fame as the "master of disaster'' in class-action cases. He sued not only the Schilling family, who owned the nightclub, but a roster of defendants encompassing a panoply of industries and services. These included manufacturers and suppliers of the paneling and other furnishings he blamed for creating toxic smoke after the club caught fire.
His comprehensive strategy, which has since become commonplace in mass injury actions, resulted in a $50 million payoff for 281 plaintiffs.
To those survivors and families of Beverly Hills victims, of course, the knowledge that the fire generated life-saving reforms and greater power for litigants can provide only cold comfort. The same must be true for others whose lives were blighted by the fire: rescuers, hospital staff and morgue attendants who shared the trauma that night.
Those workers were neglected victims of the devastation, said Cathy LaCour, director of social services at St. Luke East Hospital, who has studied post-traumatic stress disorder.
Calamities such as the Beverly Hills have taught therapists about the need for structured intervention to help safety personnel cope, Ms. LaCour said.
"There was counseling made available the day after the fire for families and survivors,'' she said. "Unfortunately, that wasn't applied to the emergency workers, firefighters, police and others.''
Today, therapists have developed methods for counseling rescue workers in such situations. A technique called Critical Incident Stress Debriefing involves counseling of emergency personnel that includes mental health professionals and the workers' peers.
But nothing of its kind existed in 1977, she said.
"I've had people tell me the fire had such an impact on them that they left their profession,'' Ms. LaCour said. "The fire is still very much in the here and now for them.''
ENQUIRER SPECIAL REPORT: 'THE FIRE THAT STILL RAGES'
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SCHILLING REJECTS RESPONSIBILITY May 24, 1997
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