The guardians of our electrical safety have let us down. Aluminum wiring is a skeleton in the closet that left a trail of fatalities, injury, destruction and a latent hazard in millions of homes. It helped launch the Consumer Product Safety Commission and put a damper on TV investigative reporting. You’ll see the many ways that a self-regulating industry protected itself while putting its end-user customers at risk.

The catastrophic fire at the Beverly Hills Supper Club in Southgate, Kentucky in 1977 resulted in 165 fatalities. About 2,400 people were in the building. People came to hear John Davidson sing, to have dinner and to attend a variety of functions, including meetings and a wedding reception. This fire ranks high among the major civilian fire losses of the 20th century.

Lawsuits followed. An aluminum wire connection failure was alleged to be the cause of the fire. Thirty-six companies in the electrical industry defended their products and their actions against claims that the aluminum wiring system they marketed was inherently dangerous, that they had conspired to market it in spite of their knowledge of the hazard and that they failed to warn the public.

Information from that litigation tells the story of a self-regulating industry that managed an electrical fire safety problem to protect itself and not the public. Once in motion, the marketing of aluminum wiring was a rolling stone that could not be stopped by well-intended individuals in the companies that were involved. The industry’s standards and practices were not equal to the task. Corporate interests and individual careers were protected at the expense of public safety.