An early morning fire in an adult board and care facility housing mentally disabled adults left ten residents dead and two seriously injured. Detroit Fire Department investigators determined that smoking materials carelessly discarded in a kitchen trash receptacle started the blaze which led to the largest loss of life in a single residential fire in the city’s history. The fire building was originally a two-family dwelling that was converted to a rooming house sometime in the 1960s. City building officials reported that their records indicated the dwelling was classified as a multi-family dwelling operating as a rooming house when they began regular inspections of it in 1969. In February 1975, the occupancy was licensed as an adult foster care facility by the Michigan Department of Social Services. An adult foster care facility would be classified as a board and care facility under NFPA 101, Life Safety Code and a Use Group I-l structure by the BOCA National Building Code, 1990 edition.