On Dec. 1, 1958, a fire consumed Our Lady of the Angels grade school on the West Side of Chicago, killing 92 children and three nuns.
A wire story from that day captured a fragment of the desperation:
"Max Stachura stood outside the burning building, begging his little boy, Mark, 9, to jump into his arms. Children were falling all about the father and he caught or stopped the fall of 12 of them. But little Mark was too frightened or he didn't understand his father. Mark didn't jump."
Fifty years later, Mark's mother has the day in crisp focus, and adds a missing detail.
As Mark stood at that second-floor window, fire to his back, he held a small statue in his hand and waved it proudly through the black smoke, hoping his father would notice. Mark had won the statue that day — a figure of an infant Jesus — for being first to answer a quiz question.
"I guess he was just so proud of that prize," said Mary Stachura, now in a retirement home in Bartlett. "I don't think he really understood what was happening."
Few of the children trapped in the school could have grasped the enormity of the danger they faced, and few of the panicky adults on the ground — parents and neighbors and firefighters — had time to reflect. They acted, grabbing ladders of all lengths from garages, reaching through broken windows to haul small, waterlogged bodies from the flames.
Max Stachura watched as other children pushed his son back, away from the window and into the flames. The boy was later identified by a homework sheet crumpled in his pocket.
Max rarely spoke of that day. He died suddenly of a heart attack at 52.
"He was much too young," said Mary, now 85. "That fire. It changed everything."
The fire at Our Lady of the Angels remains one of the worst tragedies in Chicago's history, a ghastly few hours on a cold, sunny afternoon that shattered families and knocked a hopeful, growing community forever off its path.
The cause of the fire was never officially determined, and no one was held accountable. Some parents who lost a child--or children-- found ways to blame each other and wound up divorced. Others sold their tidy two flats and moved away, hastening the flight of the middle class from the city's West Side.
"It seems as though people just couldn't get far enough away," said Jill Grannan, a curator at the Chicago History Museum. "That school and that parish is one that had a lot of people. It had a growing population. There was such a boom, and then people really just had to leave.
"I don't think the community ever really came back."
Few in the neighborhood now would recall the blaze. But for parents and firefighters, journalists and now-grown schoolchildren, the memories remain etched in intricate detail.
Steve Lasker, then a photographer for The Chicago American newspaper, was driving along Grand Avenue, heading to his newsroom after an assignment in Elmwood Park. He heard a call come over a radio tuned to the police frequency: "They're jumping out the windows!"
"But I didn't know where it was," Lasker said. A fire engine cut in front of him and he quickly turned to follow. He parked on Iowa Street and headed toward the smoke, stopping abruptly when he saw the school on Avers Avenue in flames.
"I froze for a few seconds, or maybe it was minutes, I don't know, I couldn't tell," said Lasker, now 78. "Oh my God, there's still kids in there. Mayhem was going on and they started pulling kids out of there left and right."
From atop a fire truck, Lasker shot one of the most iconic photos of the day. It showed a helmeted firefighter, his face drawn in sorrow, carrying the soaking wet, lifeless body of 10-year-old John Jajkowski Jr. from the building.
Just 28 and the father of a 6-month-old girl, Lasker felt his stomach churn as he watched the rescue through the lens of his camera. The cold wind froze tracks of tears on his face. Though many photos were published, 20 years would pass before he would voluntarily show them to anyone.
PROVIDENCE - Gina Russo’s head was seared down to the skull, her body pocked by third-degree burns, her future consumed by painful skin grafts and guilt over having survived The Station nightclub fire when her fiance had not.
“I remember people would come to visit, and then when everybody was gone, thinking, ‘How am I going to do this? Why was I kept alive?’ ” Russo said.
Five years ago tomorrow, fire tore through the club in West Warwick, killing 100 people and injuring more than twice that many. The blaze began when pyrotechnics used by the band Great White ignited flammable soundproofing foam that covered the walls and ceilings.
Survivors live with disfigurement, depression and steep medical bills, and victims’ relatives endure flashes of bitter anger and loneliness.
However, they also have found ways to cope.
James Gahan has set up scholarships for youth sports programs in the name of his son, Jimmy, one of those who died, and has worked for stricter fire codes.
Bonnie Hoisington still tears up when she hears “One Particular Harbour,” a Jimmy Buffett song that reminds her of her daughter, Abbie, but she finds comfort in her new grandchild, born to another daughter after Abbie died.
Russo says she is determined not to let the memory of that night and the loss of her fiance, Alfred Crisostomi, dominate her thoughts.
Russo was placed in a medically induced coma because she had third-degree burns on 40 percent of her body, and she didn’t wake up until 11 weeks after the fire. She remembers the pyrotechnics and seeing the ceiling melting, smoke, heads on fire. Crisostomi put his hand on her back and pushed her forward, yelling “Go!” and she never saw him again. He died from inhaling toxic fumes.
After she woke up, she needed help standing, bathing and tying her shoes. She has scars up and down her arms and wears an auburn-colored wig in public.
During her arduous rehabilitation, Russo drew motivation from the need to care for her young sons, and from her faith that Crisostomi would have prodded her to recover. Even so, as each anniversary awakens painful memories, her normally bright demeanor turns somber and her family knows that’s the time to give her space.
She and others feel let down by the justice system.
A grand jury indicted club owners Jeffrey and Michael Derderian and former Great White tour manager Daniel Biechele, though many victims believed members of the band and the local fire inspector also were culpable. All three reached plea deals, and Biechele and Michael Derderian were sent to prison in 2006.
Biechele is scheduled to be released on parole next month, and Derderian in 2009. Jeffrey Derderian was spared jail time and ordered to perform community service.
VH1 Classic and VH1 on Board to Televise 'VH1 Classic Presents: Aftermath: The Station Fire Five Years Later' Friday February 15, 3:09 pm ETFor the rest of the article click the link "VH1".
One-Hour Special Will Also Share Survivors' Stories on Easter Sunday, March 23 10:00 P.M.*
PROVIDENCE, R.I., Feb. 15 /PRNewswire/ -- VH1 Classic and VH1 will air "VH1 Classic Presents: AFTERMATH: The Station Fire Five Years Later" a one- hour special of concert highlights on Sunday, March 23, 2008 10:00 p.m.* from the upcoming Phoenix Rising! Musicians United to Benefit the Victims of the Station Nightclub Fire. John Rich (Big & Rich), Alabama's Randy Owen, Dierks Bentley, Kellie Pickler and Gretchen Wilson will be joining Aaron Lewis (Staind), Tesla, Twisted Sister, Kevin Max and Stryper featuring Tom Scholz and Gary Pihl of Boston and the just added, Winger among others.
A historic look back at the Beverly Hills Supper club fire. Aprox 9 mins.
The fire at Bradford City football ground on 11th May 1985.
The cause of the fire is thought to have been the accidental dropping of a match or a cigarette stubbed out in a polystyrene cup and the resulting fire was fuelled by rubbish underneath the wooden stand.
The antiquated stand at Valley Parade eventually claimed the lives of 56 supporters and about 265 were injured. It was the worst fire disaster in the history of British football history.
Chicago in 1871 was already a big city, bustling with more than 334,000 residents. Its streets, sidewalks, and most of its buildings were made of wood. Hay and straw were inside every barn. To make the situation worse, people used candles and oil lamps.
Fires had been common that year because of the dry weather. The Chicago Fire Department was overworked and underequipped. On Saturday, October 7, firefighters began putting out a fire that wiped out four city blocks. It took them 16 hours. By Sunday evening the men were exhausted. Then around 8:45 p.m., a fire began in the barn of Patrick and Catherine O’Leary.
FROM THE BEGINNING, EVERYTHING WENT WRONG
Human error then made a bad situation worse. One firefighter later said, “From the beginning of that fatal fire, everything went wrong!” A watchman atop the courthouse saw smoke rising from the O’Leary barn, but he assumed it was coming from the previous fire. When he finally realized a new fire was blazing, he misjudged its location. His assistant sent a message to the fire stations, but he mistakenly directed horse-drawn fire wagons to a location about a mile from the burning barn. When the fire department finally reached the barn, its equipment was no match for the blaze. The new fire raged on.
The raging fire that is denuding hillsides and darkening the clear blue waters of Lake Tahoe is the final product of 150 years of mismanagement of the Sierra Nevada ecosystem, fire management experts said Monday.
From Gold Rush clear-cutters to modern home-builders, people have brought changes to the Tahoe basin that have fueled the intensity of the 2,500-acre Angora fire near the town of South Lake Tahoe. By Monday night, 178 homes had fallen casualty to the 2-day-old blaze, which was only 40 percent contained.
Ecologists and local residents said they saw such a disaster coming.
"It's the fire we've been anticipating for 20 years," said Patsy Miller, who owns a residence at Fallen Leaf Lake, about a mile from where the flames had spread by late Monday.
"People have interjected their homes into a system that has a natural tendency to burn very frequently, and where we have suppressed the frequency of those fires for so long, there's an ungodly amount of fuel there," Forest Service regional ecologist Hugh Safford said.
The immediate cause of the Angora fire was under investigation Monday. But the fire's beginnings can be traced all the way back to the Gold Rush and the Comstock-era mining boom.
"They clear-cut about two-thirds of the basin," said Shane Romsos, science and evaluation program manager for the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency.
Mixed-growth forests of fire-tolerant species like the self-pruning Jeffrey pine were replaced by uniform stands of dense white fir and undergrowth, which grew rapidly in the unusually wet years of the early 20th century.
Then came the vacation homes and ski areas. As development spread, land managers focused on fire suppression, allowing the fuel load to build every year.
Federal officials began to shift fire-management policies in the mid-1990s and in recent years have sought to clear away dense underbrush and thin trees in the forests around Tahoe and in the rest of the Sierra. U.S. Forest Service officials said those efforts probably saved at least 500 homes that otherwise could have been engulfed by the Angora fire.
But many forests are still vulnerable to catastrophic burns. This past winter had a notable shortage of snowfall, and Sunday brought ferocious winds that whipped the flames from treetop to treetop even in woodlands where some thinning had been done. Winds that died down Monday were expected to pick up tonight and Wednesday.
"Conditions were ripe for a fire like this," Romsos said.
Now, fire-stripped hillsides could lead to a surge of runoff, clouding Lake Tahoe.
For the 1880 census, Charles Sargent mapped forest fires. Fire was nearly everywhere, some places more vigorously than others. The amount of burning was, by today's standards, staggering. A developing nation, still primarily agricultural, the United States had a fire-flushed landscape not unlike those of Brazil and Indonesia in more recent decades. While lightning accounted for some ignition, and steam power (notably locomotives) for a growing fraction, the principal sources of fire were people—people burning for hunting, for traditional foraging, for landclearing, for clearing field fallow, for pasturage, for the ecological equivalent of housecleaning. And of course there was a significant amount of sheer fire littering. Where spark met large caches of combustibles (as around logged sites), horrific fires, implacable as hurricanes, broke out. The idea that one might abolish fire seemed quixotic, in fact, dangerous. Without fire most lands were uninhabitable. Free-burning fires came and went with the seasons, as unstoppable as the movement of the sun across the heavens. Right-thinking conservationists, as good Progressives, argued for government intervention to stop them.
On May 28, 1977, as many as 2,800 guests and employees were in the club on a hilltop across the Ohio River from Cincinnati. An estimated 1,300 of those people sat at tiny tables jammed into the Cabaret Room, nearly triple the number of occupants the room could safely accommodate.
The building did not have an automatic sprinkler system, now regarded as a common fail-safe in public buildings and required in many areas.
Investigators later blamed the fire on problems with the aluminum wiring.
John Beatsch, now chief of Southgate Fire Department, was 21 and on the first firetruck to respond.
After arriving, he ran to the back, where firefighters were pulling people from the Cabaret Room. The overflow crowd had been wedged in. Tables and chairs had been set up in the aisles and along ramps to the stage.
"We could hear people calling for help. Firefighters were yelling, 'Move your arms.' They were piled up. It seemed the people on the bottom were alive. The people on top were overcome."
Firefighters also were frantically searching inside the building; they worked until nearly dawn pulling bodies out.
"There were plenty of signs that said exit, but they didn't lead directly to exits," said Greg Hirsch, a Southgate firefighter. "There was a long hallway and if you went all the way down, there was an exit. But there were dressing rooms and closets along the hallway. We found people inside those rooms. They got confused, couldn't see. They thought they found a door."
Gerald Sanford, now chief of Central Campbell County Fire District, had traded shifts with another firefighter and was working that night.
"Being in Vietnam, I thought that was the worst you could see," he said. "But even having that training, I wasn't prepared for 165 people dying."
The fires that raged after the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco caused far more damage than the quake itself. According to legend, this fire hydrant saved the Mission District. Every year, it is spray-painted gold in commemoration. aprox. 7 mins.
To learn more about the past and present of San Francisco's cultural epicenter, visit www.sfmission.com
Fire Station No. 14
On November 2, 1936, twelve years after the segregation of Engine 30 the white firemen were removed from Fire Station 14 and it also became all-black. Angry at being removed from their station, the whites trashed the building with garbage and fecal matter. The Battalion Chief ordered them back to clean up their mess.
Some cats chase rats...not Mickey...he chases fire! Watch this very old video of Mickey the Fire Cat sliding down a pole and going to a fire! 1:22
