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Ohio building history, hazards and the rules

Ohio fires, floods and collapses, and the rules that followed each one

Some of Ohio's building, fire and safety rules start with a dated incident. This page sets out nine of them the way the record does: the date, the place, the count exactly as the marker or the agency gives it, the finding where an investigation left one, and the rule that came next. Six of those links are stated by a source as cause and effect; the rest only followed in time, and the page says which is which. Only one of the nine, the penitentiary fire, happened in Columbus; the 1913 flood and the 1978 blizzard reached Central Ohio as well.

Last updated September 2026 · Ohio Historical Markers, agency and university records, and the Residential Code of Ohio with the Board of Building Standards' own documents were read September 2026 · No prices on this page; the Estimate Builder carries those · Part of the knowledge base

What this page records, and how

Each incident is set out as the record sets it out: the date, the place, the count exactly as the marker or the agency gives it, the finding where one exists, and the rule that came after. Where a source states the causal link in its own words this page says the incident led to the rule; where a rule only came later it says the rule followed.

The Ohio Emergency Management Agency's hazard assessment, an appendix to the 2019 state hazard mitigation plan, heads its historical-events column Casualties, which it defines as injuries and fatalities, so no figure in it is stated as a death toll and none is used as one here.

IncidentDatePlaceThe rule, and the record's link
Lakeview School fireMarch 4, 1908Collinwood, ClevelandLed to revised building codes; no statute named
The March floodMarch 1913Miami ValleyLed to the Conservancy Act of Ohio, 1914
Cleveland Clinic fireMay 15, 1929ClevelandLed to national film-storage standards
Ohio Penitentiary fireApril 21, 1930ColumbusThe Ohio Parole Board of 1931 followed; no building rule
East Ohio Gas explosionOctober 20, 1944ClevelandLed to storing natural gas below ground
Golden Age Nursing Home fireNovember 23, 1963Huron CountyThe marker says it called for action; no rule found
Silver Bridge collapseDecember 15, 1967KanaugaLed to the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1968; a bridge, not a building
Xenia tornadoApril 3, 1974Greene CountyOhio's school tornado statute followed
The blizzardJanuary 26 and 27, 1978Ohio and the regionRoof collapses recorded; no rule found

How Ohio came to regulate building at all

The Ohio Board of Building Standards says the Ohio legislature first authorized construction regulation in 1911, and that although very limited it covered various aspects of construction, repair, sanitation and fire protection. The East Central Ohio Building Authority, a regional building department, says the first building code written for the whole state was adopted in 1911 and covered public buildings. The words public buildings are that authority's alone, because the 1911 act itself could not be opened. Ohio Revised Code section 3781.01 still preserves any municipal building code in force on September 13, 1911. Whether Columbus's own earlier building code counted among those the section preserved is a question examined, and left open, on the page about which building code a house was built under.

A second step has its own date and text. The Ohio Attorney General's opinion of May 7, 1943 quotes an act to regulate the construction, alteration and repair of buildings and structures and to establish a board of building standards, says it was enacted in 1923, and quotes its exception: it shall not apply to single and two-family dwelling houses.

Nothing read here reconciles the 1911 date with the 1923 act, so each is stated separately. What the state did afterward, the exemption of houses in 1955 and the residential code effective May 27, 2006, is on the page about who shaped Central Ohio houses.

Collinwood, Cleveland, March 4, 1908

The Ohio Historical Marker in Collinwood, Cleveland, says a fire of unknown origin started in the basement of the Lakeview School on Ash Wednesday, March 4, 1908. The marker gives the toll as 172 children, 2 teachers and 1 rescuer, a count that includes a rescuer, and the Smithsonian gives the same three figures; the Encyclopedia says instead that only 194 of the 366 students enrolled escaped.

The most repeated fact about this fire is wrong: the doors opened outward. The Encyclopedia says the coroner's inquest and a physical examination of the building found that the outer doors did open outward, in accordance with the law at that time, and the Smithsonian says the same. The Encyclopedia puts the bottleneck at inner vestibule doors narrower than the outer ones; the Smithsonian at the doorknob latches.

The marker says that as a result of the fire, local and national governments took action to revise building codes and remodel existing buildings to make schools safer, and the Encyclopedia says it caused numerous school inspections across the country, which resulted in stricter laws. Neither names a statute, and no Ohio school building law traceable to Collinwood could be found. The Smithsonian says crash bars, also called panic bars, were added to exit doors after the tragedy, and that the first model was produced by the Vonnegut Hardware Company.

The flood of March 1913 and the Conservancy Act

The Miami Conservancy District says more than 360 people lost their lives in the Miami Valley in the March 1913 flood. The Ohio Emergency Management Agency lists the 1913 Easter Flood in south and southwest Ohio with 467 casualties, which in that document means injuries and fatalities.

The Ohio Historical Marker at Miamisburg says that in 1914 the Ohio General Assembly passed the Conservancy Act of Ohio, leading to the establishment of the Miami Conservancy District in 1915. The district puts the act in February 1914, says it allowed the creation of regional agencies to provide flood protection for communities within the state, and says it organized on June 28, 1915 because opposition to the law delayed it. The act produced a way to build flood protection, not a rule about houses. Columbus's own half of that flood is on the Franklinton page.

Cleveland, 1929 and 1944

The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History says the Cleveland Clinic disaster of May 15, 1929 cost the lives of 123 people and that 92 were injured, and that the fire began in the clinic's main building, where it is believed nitro-cellulose x-ray film released smoke and poisonous gases; the words it is believed are the Encyclopedia's. On the national level, it says, the clinic fire resulted in the development of new standards for storage and labeling of hazardous materials, especially nitro-cellulose film. Cleveland State University's Cleveland Historical says the investigating commissions made amendments to policy that would alter fire-fighting practices and hospital procedures. Neither names a standard or a standards body.

The Ohio Historical Marker at Grdina Park in Cleveland says that on October 20, 1944 an above-ground tank of liquefied natural gas began to leak vapor that reached nearby sewer lines and ignited, with 79 homes and two factories destroyed, and 131 killed and 225 injured. The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History says the death toll reached 130; the two counts differ by one. The marker says the disaster led to a movement by public utilities and communities across America to store natural gas below ground without tanks, and the Encyclopedia says the analysis of its cause led to new and safer methods for the low-temperature storage of natural gas. That is a change in practice, not a code section either names.

Columbus, April 21, 1930: the Ohio Penitentiary

The Ohio History Connection says a fire broke out in the Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus on April 21, 1930 that would claim the lives of 322 inmates, and that another 130 were seriously injured; WOSU Public Media gives 320. The same account says the source was a candle that ignited oily rags left on the roof of the penitentiary's West Block, and that by 1930 the prison held twice as many inmates as its original capacity.

What followed was not a building rule. The Ohio History Connection says the state legislature created measures to address overcrowding and that the General Assembly established the Ohio Parole Board in 1931. Nothing opened for this page records a change to prison construction or to a fire rule. The mine explosion of November 5, 1930 at Millfield in Athens County is on the page on the Hocking Valley coal towns that heated Columbus.

Fitchville, the Silver Bridge, Xenia and the blizzard

The Ohio Historical Marker in Huron County says the Golden Age Nursing Home, one mile north of Fitchville, caught fire and burned to the ground at 4:45 in the morning on November 23, 1963, killing 63 of 84 patients, and that the fire was ignited by the arcing of overloaded wiring. The marker adds that the incident called for action to require sprinklers, automatic fire detection systems, and electrical wiring compliance to building codes in all nursing homes. Called for action is not a rule made, and none was found. The Beverly Hills Supper Club fire of 1977 was in Kentucky, and no source read here ties it to an Ohio rule.

The Ohio Historical Marker at Kanauga says that on December 15, 1967 forty-six interstate travelers lost their lives when the Silver Bridge, which carried U.S. Route 35 between Point Pleasant, West Virginia and Kanauga, Ohio, collapsed into the Ohio River. The American Society of Civil Engineers says the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1968 initiated the first national bridge safety inspection program in the United States as a direct result of that collapse, and the Federal Highway Administration says Congress required the Secretary of Transportation to establish the National Bridge Inspection Standards in 1968, with the original standards published in 1971. It is a bridge and not a building.

The Ohio Historical Marker at the Greene County Historical Society says a tornado touched down at 4:40 in the afternoon on April 3, 1974 and destroyed a large portion of the City of Xenia, and that a total of 34 lives were lost; the National Weather Service gives the same 34 and calls that tornado the deadliest of 148 documented in the April 3 to 4 Super Outbreak across 13 states. Section 3737.73 of the Ohio Revised Code now tells a school to instruct pupils in the safety precautions to be taken in case of a tornado alert or warning and to designate places to shelter them, and says nothing in it requires a school to construct or improve a facility for use as a shelter area. The same section tells a principal to drill the children at least six times a school year and not to let the building's doors and exits be locked during school hours. Nothing ties either to 1974 or to 1908.

The National Weather Service says the death toll from the blizzard of January 26 and 27, 1978 rose to over 70 across the region, including 51 in Ohio, that snowdrifts of 15 to 25 feet reached the rooftops of houses and businesses and caused many roof collapses, and that two of the Ohio deaths were in buildings that collapsed under the weight of heavy snow. No rule is traced to that storm by anything read here. Snow, water, soils and weather as hazards are on the page about what goes wrong in a Central Ohio house.

The rules a Central Ohio house carries today

These sections are read from Ohio's own rule text, and Ohio prints residential sections without the model code's R prefix. They sit in Ohio Administrative Code rule 4101:8-3-01, the building planning chapter of the Residential Code of Ohio, effective July 1, 2019, whose prior effective dates are May 27, 2006, January 1, 2013, July 1, 2014 and January 1, 2016; that list does not say which section arrived in which year. No source read for this page ties any of them to an Ohio incident. Which rules a house was built under depends on when it was built, and the era and style page reads that from the house itself.

Section 314 of the Residential Code of Ohio puts smoke alarms in each sleeping room, outside each separate sleeping area in the immediate vicinity of the sleeping rooms, and on each additional story including basements and habitable attics, and says an alarm shall be not less than 3 feet horizontally from the door of a bathroom containing a bathtub or shower, which is the sentence a bathroom project meets first. Section 314.1.2 adds that on each level, alarms using photoelectric and ionization technologies be installed, as separate alarms or dual-sensing ones; the rule sets that section in italic, the Board of Building Standards' own mark for an Ohio change. It does not stand alone: the Board's Interpretation No. 1-2025, of May 2025, says the requirement was adopted on January 1, 2016, that alarms listed to the eighth edition or later of UL 217 may be installed instead, and that the section will come out of the code at the next update.

Carbon monoxide alarms are newer in Ohio than most people expect: the Board of Building Standards' memo of May 17, 2013 says section 315 was included in the rules effective January 1, 2013 and that there had previously been no requirement for carbon monoxide alarms in the code. They are required in a new dwelling unit with a fuel-fired appliance or an attached garage, and in an existing one with either where an application for approval is required for work on a sleeping room, the space just outside one, an attached garage or a fuel-fired appliance. They go outside each separate sleeping area in the immediate vicinity of the bedrooms.

Section 310 requires every sleeping room to have at least one operable emergency escape and rescue opening, with a net clear opening of not less than 5.7 square feet, a net clear height of not less than 24 inches and a net clear width of not less than 20 inches. Sections 302.5 and 302.6 govern an attached garage: not less than half-inch gypsum board or equivalent on the garage side, not less than five-eighths-inch Type X gypsum board from habitable rooms above it, no opening from a private garage directly into a room used for sleeping, and any other door solid wood, or solid or honeycomb-core steel, at least one and three-eighths inches thick, or 20-minute fire-rated. Where that gypsum board was made is on the page about what Ohio made for houses.

On sprinklers Ohio is explicit. Section 313.2 says an automatic residential fire sprinkler system is not required to be installed in one-, two-, or three-family dwellings, and section 313.1 says the same of buildings with four or more dwelling units; those words are italic in the rule too. Section 507.8, in the floors chapter at rule 4101:8-5-01, says a deck attached to an exterior wall must be positively anchored to the primary structure for both vertical and lateral loads and must not be attached by toenails or nails subject to withdrawal. The International Code Council says nail-only connections are one of the primary reasons for deck collapses, on data collected since 2001; it names no Ohio incident.

The electrical rules a bathroom meets are on the bathroom electrical page, and what a house built before 1978 may carry in its paint and older materials is on the lead and asbestos page.

The short version. Six links here are stated by a source as cause and effect: Collinwood to revised building codes and the first panic-bar model, the 1913 flood to the Conservancy Act of Ohio, the Cleveland Clinic fire to national film-storage standards, East Ohio Gas to storing gas below ground, and the Silver Bridge to the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1968. Everything else followed in time.

Sources

Every figure, date and quotation on this page comes from one of these documents, read on the date given. Where two of them disagree, the page says so.

Common questions

Which fire changed Ohio's building code?

No single fire is recorded as changing Ohio's own building code. The closest on the record is the Collinwood school fire in Cleveland on March 4, 1908. The Ohio Historical Marker says that as a result local and national governments took action to revise building codes and remodel existing buildings to make schools safer, and Case Western Reserve University's Encyclopedia of Cleveland History says the fire caused numerous school inspections across the country, which resulted in stricter laws. Neither names a statute, and no Ohio school building law traceable to that fire could be found.

Did the doors at the Collinwood school fire open inward?

No, and that is the most repeated wrong fact about the fire of March 4, 1908. Case Western Reserve University's Encyclopedia of Cleveland History says the coroner's inquest and a physical examination of the building found that the outer doors did open outward, in accordance with the law at that time, and the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History says the same. The Encyclopedia puts the bottleneck at a set of inner vestibule doors narrower than the outer doors, and the Smithsonian points at the doorknob latches rather than the swing of the doors.

What did the flood of 1913 change in Ohio law?

It led to the Conservancy Act of Ohio. The Ohio Historical Marker at Miamisburg says that in 1914 the Ohio General Assembly passed the act, leading to the establishment of the Miami Conservancy District in 1915. The district says the act passed in February 1914 and allowed the creation of regional agencies to provide flood protection for communities within the state, and that it organized on June 28, 1915 because opposition to the law delayed it. The district also says more than 360 people lost their lives in the Miami Valley in that flood.

When did Ohio start requiring carbon monoxide alarms in houses?

January 1, 2013. The Ohio Board of Building Standards' memo of May 17, 2013 says the carbon monoxide alarm section was included in the rules effective on that date, and that there had previously been no requirement for carbon monoxide alarms in the code. The Residential Code of Ohio requires them in a new dwelling unit that contains a fuel-fired appliance or has an attached garage, and in an existing one with either where an application for approval is required for work on a sleeping room, the space just outside one, an attached garage or a fuel-fired appliance.

Does Ohio require fire sprinklers in a new house?

No. The Residential Code of Ohio says at section 313.2 that an automatic residential fire sprinkler system is not required to be installed in one-, two-, or three-family dwellings, and section 313.1 says the same of buildings with four or more dwelling units and other Group R occupancies permitted to use the code. Those words are set in italic in the rule, which the Board of Building Standards' own commentary describes as the mark of an Ohio change to the model code the state adopts. A national article about residential sprinklers is describing something else.

What did the 1930 Ohio Penitentiary fire in Columbus change?

A parole board rather than a building rule. The Ohio History Connection says a fire broke out in the Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus on April 21, 1930 that would claim the lives of 322 inmates and that another 130 were seriously injured; WOSU Public Media gives 320. It says the source was a candle that ignited oily rags on the roof of the West Block, that by 1930 the prison held twice as many inmates as its original capacity, and that in the aftermath the General Assembly established the Ohio Parole Board in 1931. Nothing else is recorded as following.

Where does the Residential Code of Ohio say smoke alarms go in a house?

In each sleeping room, outside each separate sleeping area in the immediate vicinity of the sleeping rooms, and on each additional story including basements and habitable attics. The same section says a smoke alarm shall be not less than 3 feet horizontally from the door of a bathroom containing a bathtub or shower. Ohio's own amendment adds that on each level, alarms using photoelectric and ionization technologies be installed, though the Board of Building Standards said in May 2025 that an alarm listed to the eighth edition or later of UL 217 may be installed instead.

Did the Xenia tornado of 1974 change Ohio's building rules?

Nothing read for this page ties an Ohio building rule to it. The Ohio Historical Marker says a tornado touched down at 4:40 in the afternoon on April 3, 1974 and destroyed a large portion of the City of Xenia, and that a total of 34 lives were lost; the National Weather Service gives the same 34 and calls that tornado the deadliest of 148 documented in the Super Outbreak. Ohio law tells a school to instruct pupils in tornado safety precautions and to designate shelter places, and says nothing in that section requires constructing or improving a shelter.

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