At 5:30 A.M. on December 11, 1934, an alarm outside the Kerns Hotel sounded in Lansing. The 211-room, four-story brick hotel on this site had 215 registered guests. Before the last embers were extinguished, thirty-two people were known dead and forty-four, including fourteen firemen, had been injured; two of the injured later died. Among the dead were seven Michigan legislators and five unidentified people. Many guests escaped by descending four fire ladders, and eight people jumped into life nets, but the fire spread through the hotel's wooden interior so rapidly that many were trapped in their rooms. Seventy-two members of Lansing's ninety-seven-man fire force fought the blaze using eight of the force's eleven pieces of fire apparatus. They were aided by the Lansing and Michigan State Police, the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, the Volunteers of America, and citizen volunteers who brought hot drinks and dry gloves. Some of those helpers later decided to form a club to support the work of the Lansing Fire Department. The club took its name from Fire Alarm Box 23 at Ottawa and Grand, from which the first alarm for the Kerns Hotel fire was sounded. The Box 23 Club was formally organized on December 11, 1937, the third anniversary of the fire. Its membership is limited to twenty-three people and pledges support for the Lansing Fire Department and aid at fires when requested by the officer in charge.