Blast from the past

Above: The Hartford Hospital, Connecticut. Above: Emergency vehicles attending the blaze. Top: Smoke billows from the ninth floor of Hartford Hospital.

THE HARTFORD HOSPITAL FIRE—1961

BY BARRY LEE OAM

Still considered one of the worst losses of life in a US medical facility, the hospital fire in Hartford, Connecticut, on the afternoon of 8 December 1961 killed 16 people—seven patients, four employees and five visitors.

The 13-storey hospital, completed in 1948, was of modern fire-resistive construction. Internal partitions were made of utility tile and plastic with linoleum wainscoting and a plastic covered fabric finish above. In all 13 storeys, the corridor ceilings consisted of combustible fibreboard acoustical tiles mounted on gypsum lath by an adhesive. The floors were covered with linoleum and there were single-swing metal clad doors in metal frames at each end of a centre-section corridor. These doors were intended to prevent the spread of smoke and fire.

A 560-millimetre diameter metal rubbish chute, which received several tonnes of debris each day, extended from the sub-basement to the roof with an 80 mm vent pipe at the top and one sprinkler at each floor level. It opened directly onto the corridors on each floor via aluminium doors (not fire doors).

The fire started in this rubbish chute, possibly caused by a discarded cigarette. It was discovered in the basement by a maintenance operator when he returned from lunch and he attempted unsuccessfully to extinguish it. It seems that the mass of rubbish in the chute prevented operation of a single sprinkler. Black smoke began to seep out on upper floors and a nurse on the 12th floor operated a manual fire alarm station.

At the time, there was an estimated 5,000 people on the hospital campus and 793 patients in the hospital itself, 108 of whom were on the ninth floor together with 100 or so employees and visitors. At about 2.40 pm, for some unreported reason, the chute door on this floor blew off its hinges and flames erupted into the corridor. A minute later the sprinkler operated, transmitting a direct brigade alarm. The blast from the chute opening ignited the combustible ceiling tiles and flames roared down the hallway.

An employee working nearby closed a metal clad smoke door at the north end of the corridor, but someone unlatched the other smoke door at the south end, allowing flames and smoke to sweep into the south wing.

Hospital staff promptly closed doors to stairways, thereby retarding smoke spread and fire penetration to other floors. Firefighters ventilated upper floors and, from the top of 30-metre ladders reaching the eighth floor, convinced patients and other people on the ninth floor to close their doors and to use wet bed linen to seal cracks. Those who followed this advice survived. Where doors to patient rooms were not closed, the occupants died.

The 16 deaths occurred on the ninth floor.

Following the Hartford Hospital blaze, statewide code changes included extra exits in corridors longer than 9 m, design changes to smoke barriers and automatic fire door closers. The regulations concerning rubbish chute location and door specifications were revised. Once again, the importance of fire safety features, even in buildings of modern fire-resistive construction, was underlined in the thickest possible lines. It is worth noting that Hartford Hospital was subsequently fitted with comprehensive automatic sprinkler protection.

According to the FPA Australia publication Fire: a century of automatic sprinkler protection in Australia and New Zealand 1886–1986, 157 fires were recorded in hospitals during this period in the two countries. All were controlled by sprinklers, with the average number of sprinklers operated being 1.18. There were two fatalities only.