87 Children, 3 Nuns Die in School Fire |
CHICAGO, Dec. 2 - (AP) - Ninety persons died Monday when fire struck a parochial grade school with terrifying swiftness, trapping pupils and teachers at their desks a few minutes before dismissal time. |
The final toll included 87 children and three Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. |
The fire was Chicago's worst since the disastrous Iroquois Theater fire of 1903. It was the third worst school fire in the nation in the last 200 years. |
More than 85 youngsters remained in hospitals, suffering from burns, broken bones received in frantic leaps for life and from the shivering shock of seeing playmates die in the fiery inferno. |
There were 1,300 students and teachers in the Our Lady of the Angels Roman Catholic school. |
In the Cook County morgue, sheet covered little corpses, a few charred nearly beyond identification, still lay awaiting to be identified by tearful parents. |
Sgt. Drew Brown, head of the police arson squat, favored a theory that a carelessly discarded cigarette caused the fire. |
“A carelessly discarded cigarette, tossed into a waste basket by a sneaky smoker,” Brown said was the best theory. |
He emphasized, however, that it is “strictly a theory.” |
Brown said his theory was based on these circumstances. |
Every day, about 2:30 p.m., pupils from each class go to the basement of the building and empty waste baskets into large cardboard containers. The waste later is burned in boilers by the janitor. |
Nearby is a boy's washroom - where, in Brown's theory, a boy might sneak a smoke. |
The fire started in the northeast corner of the building near the place where the waste paper is deposited. |
Two boys, who are among those performing the waste disposal chore, already have been questioned by police. |
Mayor Richard J. Daley started a fund for financial aid for families of children injured or killed in the fire. The fund, within minutes, soared to $11,000. |
Just 18 minutes was the difference between life and death. The first box alarm was turned in at 2:42 p.m. The school would have been let out at 3 p.m. |
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Within minutes the building turned into a wild, screaming inferno. Smoke and heat filled staircases and second floor corridors so fast that normal exits were impassable. |
“We are trapped. We are trapped,” nuns screamed from the windows as they huddled with groups of pupils. |
Many children panicked, stampeded to windows. Some leaped the 30 feet to a crunching death on sidewalks below rather than face the singeing heat and burning smoke. |
“Nothing killed those kids but heat and smoke.” Quinn said. |
“They just couldn't get out into the corridor to go downstairs.” |
Nearly all of the eighth grade class in two upper-floor classrooms perished. |
The screams of the children trapped on upper floors drifted down to hundreds of horrified spectators and hysterical parents standing below in the 30-degree cold. |
Firemen raised ladders and brought down dozens of shocked pupils. Priests on the scene even before the firefighters, led out others. |
Nuns, with disregard for their own safety, rolled some students down staircases. Children ducked to the floor, seeking cool and fresh air, and crawled out. Others groped their way to freedom by grasping hands and belts of classmates and filing out the smoke-filled structure. |
For some there was no rescue, however. |
“God we tried, God, how we tried.” Sobbed one fireman. “But we couldn't move fast enough. No one could live in that fire.” |
As the bodies were brought down in the eerie, hazy light, parents pushed against police lines, crying, “Where are our children? Where are our children?”. |
The U-shaped school at 3808 Iowa Street was built some 40 years ago. It was remodeled about five years ago. |
A single fire escape, with exits from the first and second floors, was in the center of the rear, or east side of the building - the bottom of the “U” which joined the wings. |