by Miriam Barmberger
Special Projects Writer

A fire broke out on the fifth floor of Thurston Hall April 19, 1979, injuring 34 GW students and causing extensive damage to the building.

Thurston Hall initially opened in 1964 as an all-female dorm named after Mabel Nelson Thurston, who became the first woman admitted as an undergraduate student at the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences when she enrolled at GW in 1888. Faced with increasing enrollment, particularly of women, the University decided to remodel an apartment building into a large dormitory. Thurston Hall made campus headlines as a "superdorm," and to this day houses an impressive 1,049 first-year students.

Despite a thorough investigation, fire officials never determined the cause of the fire; however, several student witnesses claimed that the fire originated in the bed of resident William Simms, according to The Hatchet. Although an arson team was called to the scene, they reported that any possible evidence might have been removed by the GW cleaning crews prior to the investigation. D.C. Fire Inspector Fred Brown admonished the University, after concluding that faulty wiring caused the alarms to stop ringing after 30 seconds, which might have delayed response time and escalated the severity of the fire.

The Hatchet reported that of the 34 students injured, two filed suit against the University for negligence. James Soos and William Simms each initiated lawsuits for $1 million in damages, alleging that their injuries were in part due to the defective alarm system and the Universityıs failure to properly train students in fire emergency procedures. An unidentified female student later filed similar charges, but the Board of Trustees maintained discretion over its response.

GW Housing Director Ann Webster announced that the University would immediately rectify the problems, and that summer the University spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in repairs and improvements on Thurston Hall and several other campus buildings.