A Date To Remember

     December 30, 1903. Today is the 109th anniversary of an event which affects our everyday lives, and yet will pass without much fanfare, or will probably not be mentioned at all. It is the day that 602 people died in the "fireproof" Iroquois Theater in Chicago. Thebnewly opened theater was presenting a matinee preformance of the musical-comedy Mr Bluebeard starring Eddie Foy. The theater was celebrating its opening but was not quite finished, yet the show went on.
     A full house of patrons settled in as the show started. At the beginning of act II the performers on the stage behind Foy began to look up with worried looks. A painted backdrop hung in the rafters above the stage had hung up on a floodlight and had caught fire.  An in house fireman and a stagehand had emptied several fire extinguishers on the flaming canvas but it had not doused the flames. the fireman and worker fled as several more backdrops caught fire. Flaming bits of canvas began to rain down on the stage, and the preformers began to flee. Foy remained calm and asked the audience to remain seated, and he called for the asbestos curtain to be lowered. This would hold the fire on the stage and allow the audience to leave. Several people got up and left, followed by an increasing stream of patrons all heading for the lobby. The curtain, on wooden rollers, jammed half way down. Then a backdrop fell to the stage creating an inferno in front of the audience. The people who remained ran up the narrow aisles only to find that the lobby doors opened inward. They were quickly jammed shut by a press of panicked people  As the theater filled with toxic smoke, the screaming mass struggled to get out. In the overcrowded balcony, there was one exit. Most of the people jammed themselves in a narrow hallway which led to a locked door. Another exit to the outside led to a platform with no fire escape. Dozens escaped the fire only to fall or be pushed to their death in the alley several stories below.
      The preformers made their way to an exit back stage and made their way out. The open door created a backdraft, sending a fireball the length of the theater and into the balcony, killing who ever was left. There were 27 exits in the theater, but only 3 were available to the patrons. The rest were covered or locked. Most of them were unmarked. There was no firebox near the building which delayed the alarm approximately 13 minutes. The first engine company arrived in two minutes, but the damage and the dying, was done. They bfound a lobby full of dying people flooding down the grand staircase which led up to the narrow hallway up stairs. Fighting their way to the doors leading to the theater the firemen found them jammed shut. Hacking them open they found piled bodies over 6 feet high, and silence. Crawling over a pile of bodies, hoses were dragged into the theater and the fire was put out. As the flames were driven back, the full horror of the situation was realized. There were bodies everywhere. In the end 572 bodies were taken out of the building and the alley next door. Several more died in hospitals later making the final toll 602. Several dozen people survived but were horribly burned. Chicago mourned over the new years holiday. There were few celebrations and the church bells were not rung.
     So how does this horrid event affect us ? Lighted exit signs above every door. Doors that open outward in every public place. "Panic bars" that allow doors to be opened from the inside at anytime. Wide , and lit aisles..seats made of fire resistant materials, fire extinguishers, sprinklers, employees trained to assist in emergencies are just a  few of the changes that came out of the ashes of the Iroquois Theater. Changes that came too late for 602 unlucky theatergoers on a frosty December day in 1903.

The Cure - Lovesong

Lovesong

Lovesong


Whenever i'm alone with you
You make me feel like I am home again
Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I am whole again

Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like   I am young again
Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I am fun  again

     However far away
     Iwill always love you
     However long I stay
     I will always love you
     Whatever words I say
     I will always love you

Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I am free again
Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I am clean again

     However far away
     I will always love you
     However long I stay
     I will always love you
     Whatever words I say
     I will always love you
     I will always love you

The Day Chicago Cried Pt 2

     When the roof collapsed, the force knocked the two hose teams out of the hallway and down the front stairs and most of the firemen on the ladders were knocked out of the windows. The hosewteams recovered and fought their way back into the second floor hallway.Forcing the fire back and out through the giant hole in the roof. The fire was quickly extinguished, but sadly, it was too late for the victims trapped in the classrooms. A ladder company leiutenant was credited with saving 10 children before the roof collapsed, said later that he could only see around two feet into the room, but could see the faces of the paniced children under the window. He grabbed whatever he could arms , belts, hair, whatever and swung the kids backwards to the ladder, hoping they caught the ladder, if not, well he didn't have time to look. As the fire banked down to the floor, he could see a horrific sight, a sea of childrens faces screaming for help. Knowing he could not get them all, he saw a young girl take a running start and crawl over the heads of her struggling classmates to reach the window. H e lunged in to grab her just as her clothes burst into flames. He pulled her out and swung her to the ladder. She missed and fell where several firemen broke her fall and put her out. She thanked them and passed out. She survived. The Lt. reached back into the window but the roof collapsed, knocking
him off the ladder. His turnout gear smouldering and burned on the face and hands, he was led away from the building.
     After driving the fire out of the hallway, firemen made their way into the classrooms. The horrific scenes affected many of them for the rest of their lives. In one room the teacher lay over a pile of students near the windows as if trying to protect them, in another 29 kids died sitting at their desks, in the other kids were found huddled near their dead teacher at the front of the room.
Mayor Daley arrived and insisted upon being shown the classrooms. When the fire was out, he was taken upstairs by the fire comissioner. After seeing each classroom he was near collapse, and was escorted from the building. Pale and shaken he was heard to say "I will make sure that this will never happen again." He was escorted away, and didn't look back.
     There were several laws enacted in the wake of the disaster..sprinkler systems became a requirement..ther school had none. All vertical stairways need to be enclosed with fireproof material, fire alarms must be, accessable and also notify the fire dept automatically, and fire doors cannot be blocked or covered are just a few of the new laws that came about after the fire.
     A few years later, a young man , who was caught setting another fire, confessed to setting the school fire. He told them the exact spot where he started it and how. Investigators found that he knew unrealised details and he was seen in the` school baseme`nt before th`e fire started. He was never charged.

Our Lady of Angels School Fire

The Day Chicago Cried Pt. 1

     December 1, 1958 was a dark and gloomy day in Chicago. Unfortunately, the weather wasn't the cause of the city's consternation.  The Our Lady of The Angels grade school had approximately 1,200 students crammed into a U-shaped building when it was set ablaze just before the end of the school day.  The fire was started underneath the bottom of an open stairwell at the back of the north wing of the building. The fire travelled up the stairs, bypassing the first floor because the fire door was closed. After burning for approximately 20 minutes, a window near the bottom of the stairwell shattered from the heat. The fire, fed from the inrush of oxygen, rush up to the top of the stairs and out into the hallway of the second floor where 329 students and 6 teachers were finishing their day. The fire aided by the fact that the fire door was propped open, rushed into the hallway and into the area between the roof and the ceilings of the classrooms.
     The teacher in the classroom nearest to the stairway noticed a steady rise of heat in the room an d saw that the paint was starting to bubble on the wall..ordered her kids out of the room and down the twin stair way in the front of the building. Another teacher was leading her kids out at the same time, and she pulled the fire alarm, which didnt work. Three kids panicked and ran back to their classroom. Sending the remainer of the class to the nearby church, she returned to the classroom and dragged two of the three remaining students down the stairs pulling the alarm on the way out. This time it worked, and the entire first floor was evacuated safely.
     By this time, the fire had come through the ceiling in the hallway cutting off any escape from the remaining three classrooms. Feeding on 14 layers of rubberized paint the fire turned the hallway into an inferno , burning at approximately 1200 degrees and creating thick, toxic, coal black smoke. The teachers in the remaining classrooms, realizing that they were trapped, tried to keep their students calm. But all hope was lost when the rooms began to fill with smoke. Several seconds later, the fire broke through the glass over the doors and across the ceiling made of flammable tile. The teacher then ordered the kids "to hit the windows".
     By this time, the fire dept had arrived and called for help immediately. What they saw was kids on the ground, and others jumping from windows on both sides of the building. In other rooms the kids were too small to reach the windows and the teachers were lifting them up onto the sills. Many neighbors of the school had brought their ladders but they were too short to reach the windows. At this point, the kids were jumping two or three at a time from the flaming classrooms. Help began to arrive from all over the city, and the response brought several hundred firemen and pieces of equipment. Soon after the dept arrived, there was a manned ladder at every window, as firemen saved 160 kids in a little over 10 minutes.
     Meanwhile, two hose companies fought their way up the stairway, at the front of the school. Others tried to vent the roof but were stymied by 3 layers of tar and roofing material. 15 minutes after the first truck arrived, the roof collapsed, compressing all of the fire and superheated gas down into the school. The screaming stopped.