I was only about 10 when this happened, but I vividly remember the horrific stories in the Columbus Dispatch, the Columbus Citizen Journal (now defunct) and on television. As others have mentioned, this story has stayed with me my entire life. For children alive and able to understand what happened, it was a gripping and terrifying event. A few of the things that were reported (as best I recall): The nuns were heroic in every way. There were stories of nuns rolling the children down the stairs (what were left of them) to help them escape the fire. Some reportedly lowered or dropped children from the windows in an effort to save them. One story told of a child (a girl, I think) who saw a brown line, possibly with some smoke, tracing a path along the floor next to her desk and pointed it out to a school mate. It was the fire, burning beneath their flooring, and only moments later it roared out of control and consumed the classroom. Parents showed up at the school to search for their children. It was a horribly cold day - there were stories (even a photo, I think) of finding a child's shoe on the ground, filled with ice from the water of the fire hoses having frozen in it. My prayers still go out to the dear babies who were lost, to anyone who experienced the tragedy, and especially to families who lost their sweet children (or their dear relatives serving as nuns). I cannot imagine what they went through. For those who weren't around in those days - it was quite standard for school houses, especially older buildings, to have wooden floors in their classrooms. A school of this vintage would have been like a tinder box in many ways - full of aged wooden floors and walls, and particularly dry and combustible in the winter weather, with the heat going full-force. Many schools in that era were heated by coal furnaces. This terrible event surely helped push for reform in school safety. Education is often the lowest budget priority. Such attitudes have repeatedly put our most vulnerable family members at risk.
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