May 2017 marks the 40th anniversary of the tragic Beverly Hills Supper Club fire in Southgate, KY. The fire killed 165 people and injured hundreds more, making it one of the deadliest fires in American history.
Fire synopsis
The Beverly Hills Supper Club was an upscale venue that attracted nationally known talent to its performance rooms. On the night of May 28, 1977, the club was operating beyond capacity, with a major performer scheduled for the Cabaret Room.
Beverly Hills employees discovered fire in the Zebra Room. While employees tried to douse the flames with fire extinguishers, the fire department was alerted and headed to the scene. By the time fire crews arrived, the fast-moving fire was already pumping smoke through the eaves.
There were no fire alarms in the expansive complex, meaning many patrons in more distant rooms were unaware of the blaze for several minutes. Fire had blocked some exits, forcing patrons in the packed Cabaret Room to funnel through a single exit. Many began to panic.
Firefighters did everything possible to rescue patrons from the Cabaret Room, but many became trapped in the crush of bodies trying to escape or were lost trying to find alternative exits.
By morning, more than 130 bodies had been pulled from the building—nearly all from the Cabaret Room—and many more were found in subsequent days.
Coverage continues
Firehouse Magazine first reported on the fire in the August 1977 issue—and our coverage continues today so that current and future generations of firefighters will never forget. In that spirit, Firehouse Editor-in-Chief Tim Sendelbach spoke with Richard Riesenberg—the fire chief on that fateful day—to reflect on the incident.
Sendelbach has his own unique connection to the Beverly Hills Supper Club fire:
Growing up in Wilder, KY (just a couple of miles from the site of the Beverly Hills Supper Club), May 28, 1977 will forever be etched in my mind.
I was playing whiffle ball with my friends on the street below our house when the sirens began to wale. My dad was the fire chief for the Wilder Volunteer Fire Department, and I remember him running down to his chief’s car to respond to the fire. As the sirens continued to wale, we noticed the smoke coming from the Supper Club, which was clearly visible from our back porch. For the next several hours, I sat with my mother and watched the fire in the distance.
As the night wore on and the sun began to shine the following day, the depths of the tragedy began to sink in—100, 120, 150, more than 150 and eventually 165, the number of lives lost was announced.
Over the next 15 years, I would be reminded of the depths of this tragedy, as I had several classmates who lost parents and loved ones in what stands today as one of the darkest days in our state’s history.
In the early 1990s, I served as a volunteer for both the Wilder and Southgate fire departments, and I had the honor of serving with several members who responded to Beverly Hills that night. While Chief Riesenberg had retired by then, I had the opportunity to sit down and chat him on numerous occasions about his time as chief and his actions that fateful night.
In honor of the 165 lives that were lost and the courageous efforts of those who responded to this tragic event, I’m honored to share with you a glimpse of what it was like to serve as the incident commander of one of our nation’s most deadly incidents.
The following is an account of the Beverly Hills Supper Club Fire from Chief Riesenberg:
“Oh my god, we got the big one”
I was a young man at that time and had been elected chief about a year or 16 months prior to the fire. I was a rookie chief, let’s face it, but I had been on a thousand fires before as a junior officer.
When we first got the alarm, it didn’t mean a whole lot to me because we used to get a lot of alarms up there, maybe a light in a ceiling smoking or a garbage dumpster on fire—those kinds of things. All small fires.
When we turned the corner on US 27, the building was in full view. I was on the lead truck, and I just couldn’t believe my eyes. No flames, but gray smoke was billowing out of the building from the roof eaves all over the building, and I thought, “Oh my god. We got the big one.” And boy, it was.
“We pumped that thing dry”
When we got to the top of the driveway, the guys knew what they were supposed to do. They hooked up each of our pumpers on a separate fire plug.
What we did that night was tandem-pump water from the Alexandria Pike. It had a 24-inch water main with a plug atop it right in front of Beverly. That main serviced a subdivision about a mile and a half down the road, and we had plenty of water with that, but when you tandem uphill, you have a lot of friction loss.
Later on in the evening, the dear God blessed us with a couple-acre fishing lake 100 yards south of the building, right on the same level. I didn’t know it was even there. It was in the woods. The Wilder Fire Department had an old front-mount pump. [Wilder Fire Chief Ed Sendelbach] had the guys drive it right up to the lake, and we pumped that thing dry. We got about three fighting lines out of it.
“All firefighters to the Cabaret Room”
When we first arrived, I got out of the truck and surveyed the situation. There was no smoke in the front, just coming out of the eaves on the roof. Guys scattered all over the building and laid lines. Two kitchen employees were trapped on the roof. They said the building was full of smoke and they couldn’t can’t get down through it. I asked, “Can you jump?” I didn’t think it was all that high. They said it’s too damn high to jump. So I got two of my guys to put up a portable ladder, and they got them down. I always refer to that as the beginning of our rescue effort.
We started to set up the lines. And adrenaline is flowing everywhere for a small department like we had. We grew up in a hurry, let me tell ya. We got some lines out, and Ray Roberts—he was one of my lieutenants—came running to me at full speed and almost knocked me down. He said, “There’s people dying in the Cabaret Room and we can’t get them out.”
So I issued an order that I thought I would really catch hell for. I said over the loud speaker, “All firefighters abandon the fire hoses and go to the Cabaret Room and set up a rescue operation.” And what they didn’t know was that I had other firefighters and trucks coming. You could hear them with the sirens. I knew I would get those guys to pick up the lines that were abandoned.
“Those people were blocking the exit there”
As soon as those guys got back to the Cabaret Room, we have four 1½-inch lines back there. Two of them went inside and two of them were throwing water outside.
We separated the whole building into four locations—north, east, south and west. We called it areas 1, 2, 3 and 4. We had lines almost immediately from three trucks on the Alexandria Pike side, the north side and the west side. Nothing out front yet.
People were streaming out of the front of the club, but after a while, the smoke got over in that area. Those people were blocking the exit there, just standing there; they wouldn’t open the glass door. They were free; they weren’t locked. They wouldn’t push them open for some reason. They got panicked.
I told Ed Sendelbach and the fire chief from Fort Thomas, Earl Reppetto, to go up there and see what they could do, and I sent a couple of just-arriving firefighters to go up and help them, and they got those doors open.
A kid who was with Ed Sendelbach and Reppetto said they counted about 200 people who they got out. A lot of those people would have succumbed to the smoke. It doesn’t take long, as you know. And they got them out of there.
“The roof is about to go. Get ’em out!”
I put Ralph Quiter from the Newport Fire Department in charge of the Cabaret Room section. He called me on the fire radio and said, “Chief, the roof is about ready to go. Get ’em out.” We had 16 firefighters in the Cabaret Room, and we had 7 firefighters on the roof, and my heart was in my mouth. If that roof goes, we’re going to lose 23 firefighters.
I did a lot of praying there. I got up on the portable ladder to the roof in the front with a bullhorn and started yelling orders to get the hell off, and Quiter did the same thing with his bullhorn down on the ground level where all the guys were in the room. And thank God, all 23 made it alive. Nobody got killed.
“They were thinking the fire wasn’t as bad as it actually was”
When it was all said and done and the inspectors did their thing, we got credited with saving close to 2,000, and there were thousands in the building that night. And people will say, “Geez, this isn’t Las Vegas; this is Southgate, KY.” But that joint was big. They had a huge stage show hall—the Cabaret Room—that fit a thousand people.
Most of the people who died were from the Cabaret Room. It was 9 o’clock at night and the show was supposed to start at 9. It was a full house with John Davidson. They had about 1,200 people in that room. As I understand it, the people who declined to leave didn’t want to leave their good seats. They were thinking the fire wasn’t as bad as it actually was—and that was a costly mistake.
“Everybody put their training to good use”
Believe it or not, we had a done a drill two weeks prior to the fire with Newport and Fort Thomas fire departments. That drill was certainly a help. We knew what to do and where to go. We didn’t have to think; it was already done, you know? Everybody put their training to good use.
We had Fort Thomas there, we had Newport there, and Southgate right off the bat. Then after a while, we had some more departments come in—Wilder, Highland Heights and Central Campbell. All in all, we had 77 apparatus there; we didn’t need that many, but we had quite a few. A total of 522 firefighters rotated duties on scene over the course of four days.
The most important thing is the safety of all the firefighters. I couldn’t be more thankful to God that none of us was killed.
The help I received from all other fire departments was tremendous. Everybody put in 100 percent effort. Wilder and Fort Thomas, Newport and every ambulance in Campbell County was used. We had to borrow ambulances from Hamilton County in Cincinnati. I think we had 26 ambulances, and they were just parading back and forth from the hospital to Beverly.
I credit this success to the relationships that were established prior to the fire.
“I don’t want to look at a memorial”
[Editor’s Note: The site of the supper club is marked with a historical marker distant from the Supper Club location itself, and no official memorial has ever been developed or constructed.]
I choke up and cry every once in a while thinking about those people, thinking about how many more could have died. If you put a memorial up there, I pass by that property probably 5 of 7 days a week. I don’t want to look at a memorial. There’s a big building at the base now—a medical building. That’s what I look at when I go. I can’t even put my eyes at the top of the hill.
“They call it PTSD now”
The fire affected me deeply. I lost my marriage over it and was placed in a mental ward for 33 days. A lot of people don’t know that. They call it PTSD now. I call it just mental fatigue. I couldn’t function. I damn near lost my regular job. I did lose my wife. I didn’t get to see my kids for 33 days. That was a big heartache.
When all is said and done and the smoke had cleared, I was out of the hospital, I retired from the chief’s job, I moved out of Southgate, I met a fine young lady and we got married—and we’ve been married 36 years.
I still go down to the Southgate firehouse on occasion. I’m happy, but I have to tell you, anytime something like this comes up, it takes a toll on me. I go in my office here at home and shut the door, and I may not come out for hours because I’m thinking about that damn fire. I fight that fire on occasion in my sleep. It’s never going to leave me.
Something as traumatic as this is something I’m probably never going to get rid of. I’ve been able to live with it, though.
Chief Riesenberg and his wife, Carol, live in Alexandria now. They have five children, 12 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
