1971 – Oct 19, Geiger Nursing Home Fire (all sedated patients), Texas Township, PA-all 15

— 15 National Fire Protection Association. Key Dates in Fire History. 1996.
— 15 NFPA. “Multiple-Death Fires, 1971,” Fire Journal, Vol. 66, No. 3, May 1972, p. 64.
— 15 National Fire Protection Association. The 1984 Fire Almanac. 1983, p. 137.
— 15 National Fire Sprinkler Association. F.Y.I. 1999, p. 6.
— 15 PA Gen. Assembly. The Feasibility of Retrofitting High Rises, College Dorms…, 2001.
— 15 Peterson. “Geiger Nursing Home Fire.” Fire Journal, Vol. 66, No. 1, Jan 1972, pp. 33-35.
— 15 U.S. Senate. Nursing Home Care in the United States. August 1975, pp. 460.

Narrative Information

PA Gen. Assembly: “Nursing home licensed for 18 patients. The facility was in a one- and two-story wood-frame building. Combustible interior wall finish in patient rooms and a utility room. Corridors and nurses’ stations had non-combustible wall finishes. Some rooms, including the utility room, had combustible ceiling tiles. At the time of the fire, the 15 patients were in their respective rooms, and one staff member was on duty….The building had no automatic sprinkler system, fire detection system, or fire alarm system…

“The fire started in a dryer in the utility room and ignited the room’s combustible wall and ceiling finishes. The staff person attempted to wake sleeping patients when she discovered the fire, but was unable to do so because all of them had been given sedatives. Because the utility room had no door, the fire quickly spread into the patient areas. Combustible interior finishes allowed the fire to spread rapidly, and open patient room doors permitted products of combustion to quickly enter the patient rooms.

“Contributing Factors
• The lack of an automatic sprinkler system
• The lack of separation between hazardous and patient areas
• The presence of combustible interior wall and ceiling finishes
• The use of medications which render the patients incapable of self-preservation.”

(PA Gen. Assembly. The Feasibility of Retrofitting High Rises, College Dorms…, 2001, p.37.)

Peterson: “On October 19, 1971, all 15 elderly residents of the Geiger Nursing Home perished when a fire swept through the facility. The Geiger Nursing Home, which was located in Texas Township, a small community in the northeast corner of Pennsylvania, was licensed for 18 patients; but three beds were not in use. All but one of the patients, who ranged in age from 73 years to 92 years, were ambulatory.

“The original building was a two-story wood farm¬house. In 1959 a 43-foot-by-29-foot wing was added and the facility was converted to a nursing home. The new wing contained five patient rooms (Rooms 1, 2, 3, 9, and 10 in Figure 1) and a nurses’ station. The kitchen, the dining room, the TV room, and a bathroom were located on the first floor. The remainder of the farm¬house was used as living facilities by the owner….

“The one licensed practical nurse on duty the evening of October 19 arrived at work about 2:30 pm to work the 3-to-11 shift. During the afternoon and early eve¬ning she carried out her routine duties, which included feeding the patients their evening meal, administering medication, and preparing the patients for bed. On this evening the patients had started going to bed at 6:00 pm, and reportedly all were in bed by 7:30. During the evening the nurse washed some patient clothing and around 7:30 prn she placed that clothing in the clothes dryer and set the dryer to operate approximately 30 minutes. She then continued with other duties in other sections of the building, including the kitchen.

“Around 8 pm she was at the nurses’ station, complet¬ing the records of medication given to the patients, when she heard glass break in the vicinity of the utility room and went to investigate. As she reached the point where the corridors of the two additions joined, she looked toward the utility room and saw heavy smoke at that end of the corridor. She then tried to rouse the patients by shouting, and she entered most of the pa¬tient rooms in an unsuccessful attempt to awaken them (she later admitted that all the patients had been given sedatives or sleeping pills when they went to bed — which would account for her inability to rouse them ). On returning to the nurses’ station she dialed the Fire Department. After two unsuccessful attempts to reach the Fire Department, she hung up and tried again to rouse the patients. By then the corridors were becoming heavily filled with smoke and heat from the fire. Realiz¬ing she could do nothing alone, she left the nursing home and ran about 1,000 feet to the nearest residence, which was owned by the daughter and son-in-law of the owner of the nursing home. The Fire Department was called from there, and the son-in-law immediately went to the nursing home to attempt rescues. When he reached the nursing home, however, smoke and heat prevented him from getting inside, and all he could do was to try to rouse the patients by breaking windows and shouting.

“The Honesdale Fire Department was the closest de¬partment, and the one that was called. It is a volunteer department with four pumpers. As the fire was outside the corporate limits of the town, local ordinance pro¬hibited the sending of more than three of the four pieces of apparatus. The first-due piece of apparatus was s on the road and within a mile of the facility when the fire call was received. It responded promptly, as did the fire chief and several officers who were in the station at the time. Arriving fire fighters found flames coming from the windows and from the exit nearest the utility room, which was at the rear of the building. They entered first through the old farmhouse section and from there entered the older patient section. Their attempts to remove the first patient they located (in Room 1) were futile, as the patient was restrained in bed, a fact not readily evident in the dark, smoky con¬ditions. Using water from a hand line to cool the area, they advanced to another room (Room 10), where they were able to carry the patient outside; but that patient was already dead. Fire fighters on the outside found a patient in Room 2 on a bed near a window and removed him through the window. He too was dead. Those pa¬tients were both in rooms in the older section of the building, rooms that after the fire showed no real signs of fire damage other than from heat and smoke. Addi¬tional hose lines were placed in operation at the exit locations in the newer addition and eventually fire fighters contained the fire enough to permit access to all parts of the building. What they found was not a pretty sight. All the remaining 13 patients were dead.

“In trying to determine the cause of this fire, investigators concluded that some time before the time the nurse heard glass breaking and discovered the fire, one of the baffles or tumblers inside the drum of the com¬mercial clothes dryer had broken loose and had begun to tumble around freely inside the drum. The baffle was triangular in shape, 23½ inches long and 5¼ inches high, and it weighed several pounds. Apparently, while it was being tumbled the baffle became lodged in such a way that it prevented the drum from continuing to rotate, thereby causing a belt pulley on the same shaft at the rear of the dryer to stop rotating also. The elec¬tric motor that drove the belt continued to turn, and all evidence points to ignition of the belt by friction heat generated when the pulley on the motor rubbed against the stopped belt.

“The belt and the pulleys were enclosed in a sheet metal guard to prevent persons or articles from becom¬ing entangled in the machinery. The enclosure ran verti¬cally up the back side of the dryer with an open top about 21 feet below ceiling level. When the fire started, the enclosure acted as a chimney and directed the fire against the wood-fiber ceiling tile in the utility room. There was no door on the utility room and there were no doors or subdivisions of the corridors in the building. The fire developed in the immediate area of the utility room. The glass the nurse heard break was probably in the window of the utility room….” (Peterson, Carl E. “Geiger Nursing Home Fire.” Fire Journal, National Fire Protection Association, Vol. 66, No. 1, Jan 1972, pp. 33-35.)

U.S. Senate: The Geiger Nursing. Home, was a two-story, wood-frame farmhouse converted into use as a long-term care facility. Two single-story flat roof additions were added to the original structure, the first in 1959 and the second in 1965. The former being 1/27 inch gypsum board on wood studs with wood sheathing and asbestos shingles, The latter consisted of 1/4-inch plywood paneling on 2 by 4 studs in the interior, with 1/2-inch insulation board, aluminum foil and pressed-plywood siding completing the exterior. It had no sprinkler, no fire detection system, and no evacuation plans. The fire began about 8:10 p.m. The response of the fire department was rapid but there was delay in reporting the fire. The one LRN, on duty said she had tried unsuccessfully to reach the fire department. The cause of the fire was initially laid to a defec¬tive clothes dryer, but 4 years after the fire, the Wayne County coroner’s jury ruled that the fire had been ‘deliberately set by a person or persons unknown.’ The coroner ruled that the death of all 15 patients was a result of fire and that the manner of death was homi¬cide. Firemen reported having difficulty evacuating patients because all patients were given sedatives before bedtime. Moreover, some patients were in restraints.” (U.S. Senate. Nursing Home Care…US. 1975, 460.)

Sources

National Fire Protection Association. Key Dates in Fire History. 1996. Accessed 2010 at: http://www.nfpa.org/itemDetail.asp?categoryID=1352&itemID=30955&URL=Research%20&%20Reports/Fire%20statistics/Key%20dates%20in%20fire%20history&cookie%5Ftest=1

National Fire Protection Association. “Multiple-Death Fires, 1971,” Fire Journal, Vol. 66, No. 3, May 1972, pp. 63-65.

National Fire Protection Association. The 1984 Fire Almanac. Quincy, MA: NFPA, 1983.

National Fire Sprinkler Association, Inc. F.Y.I. – Fire Sprinkler Facts. Patterson, NY: NFSA, November 1999, 8 pages. Accessed at: http://www.firemarshals.org/data/File/docs/College%20Dorm/Administrators/F1%20-%20FIRE%20SPRINKLER%20FACTS.pdf

Pennsylvania General Assembly, Legislative Budget and Finance Committee. The Feasibility of Retrofitting High Rises, College Dorms, and Certain Other Buildings With Fire Sprinklers, Volume II (A Report in Response to Senate Resolution 132). Harrisburg, PA: PA General Assembly, 1-18-2001. Accessed at: http://74.125.93.132/search?q=cache:KBzYm2dK2qIJ:lbfc.legis.state.pa.us/reports/2001/224.PDF+Fire,+Boarding+Home,+Connellsville,+PA+April+1+1979&cd=10&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

Peterson, Carl E. “Geiger Nursing Home Fire.” Fire Journal, National Fire Protection Association, Vol. 66, No. 1, Jan 1972, pp. 33-35.

United States Senate. Subcommittee on Long-Term Care of the Special Committee on Aging. Nursing Home Care in The United States: Failure in Public Policy. Supporting Paper No. 5, The Continuing Chronicle of Nursing Home Fires (Senate Report No. 94-00). Accessed 2-24-2022 at: https://www.aging.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/reports/rpt475.pdf