The Hotel That Burned and the Law It Left Behind

On December eleventh, nineteen thirty-four, fire broke out at the Kerns Hotel in downtown Lansing at about five-thirty in the morning. The hotel was a four-story brick building constructed in nineteen oh nine, but its interior was wood, and the fire found the wood and ran.

At least two hundred fifteen guests were sleeping in the hotel that night. Many had come to town for a special session of the Michigan legislature. The fire moved through the upper floors faster than the fire ladders could reach, and guests were forced to drop from windows into life nets or simply jump. Some did not make it out at all.

Thirty-four people died, making it the deadliest fire in Lansing's history and one of the sixth deadliest hotel fires in the entire twentieth century in the United States. Among the dead were seven Michigan state legislators: one state senator and six state representatives who had traveled to the capital for the legislative session. We know exactly who was there because they were working for the state.

The fire's legacy was a law. On June first, nineteen thirty-five, the Michigan Hotel Safety Act went into effect, requiring any building with ten or more people sleeping above the first floor to register with the state fire marshal and submit to safety inspections. It was a direct response to Kerns, written to make certain that whatever had allowed that building to trap and kill thirty-four people in the night could not legally repeat itself.

The Kerns Hotel site is now marked by a historical plaque in downtown Lansing. The law it produced is still on the books.