JFK's death overshadowed Ohio nursing-home fire

TOLEDO, Ohio (AP:While an anguished United States slept in the hours after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy 50 years ago, flames tore through a nursing home in rural northern Ohio, killing 63 people in what remains one of the worst such fires in America's history.

Many victims had been restrained to their beds or trapped behind wheelchairs that were too wide for the exits. Investigators later blamed faulty wiring and found the nursing home didn't have an evacuation plan.

Overshadowed by the shooting in Dallas and largely forgotten today, that deadly fire, along with a string of other nursing-home fires in the 1960s, helped bring about better federal and state oversight and uniform safety rules for the industry.

Until then, inspections and regulations left to the states were inconsistent, and there were no requirements for sprinklers, fire drills or safety plans.

The result was a series of multiple-death nursing-home fires that killed an average of 15 people per year during the 1960s and early 1970s.

Now, with stricter safety codes and sprinklers in nearly every nursing home in the US, the number killed in multiple-death nursing-home fires is less than two each year.