| Our Lady Of The Angels School Fire |
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The Our Lady of the Angels School Fire broke out shortly before classes were to be dismissed on December 1 , 1958 , at the foot of a stairway in the Our Lady Of The Angels School in Chicago, Illinois . 92 pupils and 3 nuns at this Roman Catholic grade school lost their lives when smoke, heat, and fire cut off their normal means of escape through open stairways and corridors. Another 77 were seriously injured. The tragedy was the lead headline story in American, Canadian, and European newspapers, and became a subject for propaganda by the Soviet Union. Pope John XXIII Cabled his condolences from the Vatican. The fire led to major improvements in standards for school design and fire safety. THE BUILDING BEFORE THE DISASTER Our Lady of the Angels was a Elementary School located at 909 North Avers Avenue in Chicago, at the intersection of West Iowa Street. The facility was part of a large parish on the city's west side, which also contained a church, priest rectory, convent for nuns belonging to the Sisters Of Charity Of The Blessed Virgin Mary , and two other parish halls. The school was the educational home to approximately 1,600 students in Kindergarten through 8th Grade . The north wing was a two-story structure built in 1910, but remodeled several times later. A south wing which dated from 1939 was connected in 1951 by an annex to the north wing, making the school into a U-shape. Interestingly, the school legally complied with local fire safety laws of 1958, and was generally well-maintained. However, the school contained only one Fire Escape , no water sprinklers, no automatic Fire Alarm within the building itself, no alarm automatically connected to the fire department, no smoke or rise of heat rate detectors, no fire-resistant stairwells, and no Fire Door s from the stairwells to the second floor. Although the building's exterior was brick, the interior was made almost entirely of combustible wooden materials - stairs, walls, floors, doors and roof. Moreover, the floors had been coated many times with flammable petroleum based waxes. There were only two fire alarm switches in the entire school, both located in the south wing. While there were four Fire Extinguishers in the north wing, they were mounted 7 feet off the floor, out of reach for many adults and virtually all of the children. The single fire escape was near one end of the north wing, but to reach it required passing through the main corridor, which became filled with suffocating smoke and superheated gases. With its 12-foot ceilings and an English-style Basement that extended above ground level, the school's second floor windows were 25 feet above the ground. THE FIRE The fire began in the basement of the north wing between 2:00 PM CST and 2:20 PM. Classes would have been dismissed at 3:00 PM. Ignition took place in a cardboard trash barrel at the foot of the northeast stairwell. The fire burned undetected for an estimated 15 to 30 minutes, gradually filling the stairwell with super hot gases and smoke. At approximately 2:25 PM, three eighth grade girls returning from an errand passed through the second floor of the north wing and encountered smoke, making them cough. They entered their classroom to notify their teacher, but by then the intensity of the smoke caused the nun to deem it too dangerous for her students to attempt escape via the hallway and stairs. A window at the foot of the stairwell shattered due to the intense heat, giving the smoldering fire a new supply of oxygen. The wooden staircase itself burst into flames and, acting like a chimney, sent hot gases, fire, and smoke swirling up the stairwell. It was approximately at this moment that the school’s janitor, James Raymond , saw a red glow through a window while walking by the building. After racing into the basement furnace room, where he viewed the fire in the adjacent stairwell and warned two boys to depart the area, Mr. Raymond ran into the adjacent rectory to alert the housekeeper to call the fire department. He then immediately rushed back to the school to begin evacuation. Nevertheless, there was an unexplained delay before the first telephone call from the rectory reached the fire department at 2:42 PM. One minute later a second telephone call was received from the owner of a candy store on the alley along the north wing. She in turn noticed flames in the northeast stairwell after a passing motorist entered the shop and asked her if a telephone was available to call the fire department. The fire spreads The first floor landing was equipped with a heavy wooden door, which effectively blocked the fire and heat from entering the first floor hallways. However, the northeast stairwell landing on the second floor had no blocking fire door. As a result, there was no barrier to prevent the spread of fire, smoke, and heat through the second floor hallways. To make matters worse, the western stairwell landing on the second floor had two substandard corridor doors with glass panes propped open (possibly by a teacher) at the time of the fire. This caused further drafts of air and an additional oxygen supply to feed the flames. As the fire consumed the stairway, a pipe chase running from the basement to the Cockloft above the second floor false ceiling gave the superheated gases a direct route to the attic. In the attic the temperature rapidly increased until it reached ignition point. The fire then swept down through ventilation grates in the second floor corridor and flashed through the cockloft above the classrooms. Glass transom windows above the doors of each classroom broke as the heat intensified, allowing flames in the hallway to enter the classrooms. By the time the students and their teachers in the second floor classrooms realized the danger, their sole escape route in the center hallway was all but impassable. For 329 children and 5 teaching nuns, the only remaining means of escape was to jump from their second floor windows to the concrete and crushed rock 25 feet below, or to pray for the fire department to arrive and rescue them. Recognizing the trap they were in, some of the nuns encouraged the children to sit at their desks or gather in a semi-circle and pray. And they did pray - until smoke, heat, and flames forced them to the windows. One nun ordered her students to place books and furniture in front of her classroom doors, and this helped to slow the entry of smoke and flames. Rescue attempts Fire department units arrived within four minutes of being called, but by then the fire had burned unchecked for as long as 30 minutes and was out of control. The fire department was delayed after their arrival on the scene because they had been incorrectly directed to the rectory address around the corner on West Iowa Street; valuable minutes were lost repositioning fire trucks and hose lines once the true location of the fire was determined. Additional firefighting equipment was summoned rapidly. In 1959 the National Fire Protection Association’s report on the blaze exonerated the rapid response of the Chicago Fire Department and its initial priority to rescue pupils rather than merely fight the flames. This same report blamed municipal authorities and the Archdiocese of Chicago for allowing “fire traps” such as Our Lady of the Angels School to be legally operated despite having inadequate fire safety standards. Escape attempts through the windows Firemen began rescuing children from the second floor windows, but nightmare conditions in some of the classrooms had already become unbearable. Children were stumbling, crawling, and fighting their way to the windows, trying to breathe and escape. Many jumped, fell, or were pushed out the windows before firemen could get to them. Children jumped with their hair and clothes on fire. Some were killed in the fall, and scores more were injured. The owner of the candy shop nearby took wounded children into her building to escape the winter chill while they awaited medical attention. Many of the smaller children were trapped behind frantic students at the windows, blocking any chance to escape. Some younger pupils who managed to secure a spot at a window were then unable to climb over the three-foot-high window sills, or were pulled back by others frantically trying to scramble out. Helplessly, firemen watched in horror as classrooms still partially filled with frightened, screaming children exploded. Meanwhile, passers-by and neighbors raced into the school to rescue students on the lower floor or erect ladders outside that proved to be too short for the second floor. Priests from the rectory raced to the scene and one of them was able to rescue many students by passing them through a courtyard window into the annex. A quick-thinking nun rolled petrified children down a stairwell when fear prevented them from escaping. Panicked mothers and fathers left their homes and places of work and rushed to the school. An anxious crowd of more than 5,000 onlookers had to be held back by police lines as bodies were removed during the late afternoon. Locked courtyard gate impedes rescue The south windows of the north wing overlooked a small courtyard surrounded by the school on three sides, and a seven-foot iron picket fence on the fourth side. The gate in the fence was locked. Firemen could not get to the children at the south windows without first breaking through the gate. They spent a valuable minute or two battering the gate with sledgehammers and a ladder, before it finally gave way. Between the delayed discovery and reporting of the blaze, the inherently dangerous school, and the misdirection of the fire units, the firemen arrived too late. Although they rescued more than 160 children from the inferno, many of the children they carried out of the school were already dead. Some of the bodies were so badly burned that they literally broke into pieces when firemen attempted to pick them up. Injured pupils were brought to seven different hospitals, sometimes in the cars of strangers. CAUSE OF FIRE The cause of the fire was never officially determined, but all indications point to arson. A boy, age 10 and a fifth grader, confessed to setting the blaze in 1962, but subsequently recanted his confession. He was more afraid of confessing to his mother and stepfather than to the police. The boy was observed to have Pyromaniac sexual tendencies. He confessed to setting numerous other fires in the neighborhood, mostly in apartment buildings. In his confession and lie-detector test, he related details of the fire's origin that had not been made public and that he should therefore not have known. While there was strong evidence that he was indeed the culprit, neither he nor anyone else was ever prosecuted, at least in part because the Catholic judge in the case felt he should protect the Church. Officially, the cause of the fire remains unknown. A previous arson attempt on parish facilities had burned itself out and nobody was injured. The school's safety record ]] Our Lady of the Angels School passed a routine fire department safety inspection only weeks before the disaster. The school was not legally bound to comply with all 1958 fire safety codes due to a Grandfather Clause in the 1949 standards. Existing older schools, such as Our Lady of the Angels, were not required to Retrofit the safety devices that were required by code in all schools built after 1949. In the only positive outcome of the tragedy, sweeping changes in school fire safety regulations were enacted nationwide, no doubt saving countless lives in subsequent years. Many of the young victims were buried in the "Holy Innocents" grave at Queen of Heaven Cemetery in suburban Hillside, Illinois. The three teachers were buried in a plot next to other nuns of their religious order at the adjacent Mount Carmel Cemetery. WORLD REACTION Pontiff wires his sympathy In the Vatican City, Pope John XXIII sent a telegram to the Archdiocese of Chicago. The cable read, in part, "We have been profoundly saddened to learn of the tragedy which has befallen the school of Our Lady of the Angels. We express from the heart our deepest sympathy with the parents. To the families thus sorely stricken we impart our apostolic benediction ......" Meanwhile, the Archbishop of Chicago, Albert Gregory Meyer , toured the school ruins with Mayor Richard J. Daley and nearly broke down while visiting the hospital and morgue. Soviet propaganda The Soviet Union used the tragedy for propaganda purposes at the height of Cold War tension between the USA and Russia. Radio Moscow said on December 2, 1958 that the Chicago school fire was no accident because many American schools were firetraps. "According to official data of the American education authorities, over five million American children attend school in buildings which are regarded as not safe from the point of view of fires," the broadcast said. The broadcast also mentioned it was significant that the U.S. Government "tabled in Congress a bill providing for a sum equal to only half of 1 percent of the allocations for military ends to be spent on new school buildings." In 1958, the majority of funds for U.S. schools were provided by local municipal governments, not state or federal monies. SCHOOL FIRE SAFETY IMPROVEMENTS Some 16,500 older school buildings in the United States were brought up to code within one year of the disaster. Ordinances to strengthen Chicago's fire code and new amendments to the Illinois state fire code were passed. The National Fire Protection Association estimated that about 68% of all U.S. communities inaugurated and completed fire safety improvements after the Our Lady of the Angels fire. Fire investigators came from as far away as London, England, to study the lessons that could be learned. REBUILDING A new Our Lady of the Angels School was constructed with the latest required fire safety standards and the modern building opened for classes in September, 1960. Demographic changes in the population of the city’s west side began to limit the number of students in the school during the 1980’s. The cohesiveness of the parish weakened and many Catholic residents began to move to the suburbs of Chicago. The Archdiocese of Chicago closed Our Lady of the Angels School after the Class of 1999 graduated, and later closed the other buildings and merged the parish with another one. The school building is now leased as a private charter school. OTHER AMERICAN SCHOOL DISASTERS The fire at Our Lady of the Angels School was the third highest death toll from a disaster in a U.S. school building, with 95 lives lost. The greatest school disaster occurred March 18, 1937, when at least 298 died in a natural gas explosion in New London, Texas. The other major school disaster claimed 175 lives in the Collinwood School Fire in what is now Cleveland, Ohio, on March 4, 1908. The Tri-State Tornado of March 18, 1925, killed 69 students in several school buildings across three Midwest states; the highest single toll was the school in De Soto, Illinois , where 33 children perished as walls collapsed during the tornado. The school explosion in Bath, Michigan on May 18, 1927 killed 38 students, three teachers, and three others after a mentally deranged man, who was the school board treasurer and killed himself, wired dynamite under the school building. SEE ALSO FUTHER READING
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