By Hank Klibanoff, Inquirer Staff Writer

A Common Pleas Court jury yesterday awarded more than $8 million to the mothers of six children who died in a 1979 fire in a Philadelphia Housing Authority residence that was not equipped with smoke detectors.

The eight-member jury, after a one-week trial before Judge Murray C. Goldman, awarded $7.3 million to Jean Myers, who lost five children, and more than $740,000 to Martina Jones Gray, who lost a daughter in the fire.

The jury deliberated about seven hours before determining that the authority was negligent in not installing smoke detectors in the West Philadelphia home where Mrs. Myers lived with her five children. Mrs. Gray's daughter was visiting at the time of the fire.

At the time of the January blaze, Mrs. Myers' family resided at 5132 Irwin St. Her children ranged in age from 3 to 15. Mrs. Myers, now 38 and said by her attorneys to be living in North Philadelphia, was injured in the fire.

The verdict provides Mrs. Myers $1.25 million for past and future medical bills and pain and suffering, and $1 million for past and future financial losses due to the emotional distress caused by the death of her children. There also were separate financial verdicts for the loss of each of her children.

Mrs. Gray, also 38, was awarded $740,545 in connection with the death of her daughter. Her attorneys said she now lives in Southwest Philadelphia.

John Forte, a spokesman for the PHA , said the authority probably would appeal the verdict. On the question of smoke detectors, Forte said that city fire codes did not require such devices in public housing with fewer than three units, like the Myers residence, which is a "scattered-site" unit.

James E. Beasley , who represented Mrs. Myers and Mrs. Gray, had argued that a 1976 regulation by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) required smoke detectors in all public housing units rehabilitated after issuance of the regulation. Forte said PHA attorneys told him not to comment on that.

PHA has installed smoke detectors in all of its buildings that contain three or more housing units and is installing them in other units as they are rehabilitated, Forte said. PHA 's current budget request to HUD asks for money for smoke detectors so that they may be installed in all public housing, including buildings with fewer than three housing units, he said.

The Myers family had been living in the Irwin Street residence since 1975, after it underwent rehabilitation by the PHA under a program paid for by HUD.

After yesterday's verdict, Beasley said he had noted in his arguments that in 1974, HUD issued regulations requiring that all houses insured by the Federal Home Administration have smoke detectors. In 1976, the year after the Myers home was rehabilitated, he added, HUD began requiring that all rehabilitated public housing units have smoke detectors.

Although the 1976 regulation was not retroactive, Beasley said, he argued that HUD's intention to make all public housing units safer from fire, as well as PHA 's history of fires in its scatteredsite units, should have compelled the PHA to install smoke detectors in the Myers home, even without a specific order.

Beasley said he told the jury that from 1973 to 1978, there were 522 fires in PHA scattered-site units; in the year before the fire, he said, 13 people were killed in fires in PHA units and damages from fires totaled $488,000.

"It seems to me that when the regulations came out in 1974, that should have put the housing authority on notice that maybe smoke detectors were valuable," Beasley said in the interview.