Today marks 50 years since 16 people were killed in a fire at Hartford Hospital. Today, the impact of that fire is still being felt.
The fire started at 2:30 p.m. on Dec. 8, 1961 in the basement of the south wing of the hospital, when someone apparently tossed a cigarette into the trash chute that ran through all 13 floors of the building.
A fireball shot up, blowing the door of the chute on the ninth floor and igniting the ceiling tiles and walls.
When the smoke first appeared however, nurses thought it was only a small fire and told patients not to worry, the Hartford Courant reports.
Some patient rooms were closed, but others stayed open.
"Any room that had the door closed, the people lived," Dr. David Crombie told the Hartford Courant, who was an intern at the time. "Anyone with it open died."
The investigation revealed several reasons the fire was so devastating, including flaws in the ceiling tiles and hallway paneling that proved to be a fire hazard.
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As a result of the fire, and the investigation that followed, many safety changes were made to hospitals nationwide.
In 1963, the National Fire Protection Association changed its Life Safety Code to require sprinklers in trash chutes, fire barriers and fire-resistant draperies. And the regulations seemed to have worked and there haven't been any fires as tragic in the past 50 years.
