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The Tragic Story of America’s Deadliest Nightclub Fire
BY ERIN BLAKEMORE // NOVEMBER 27, 2017 Smoke pours from the Cocoanut Grove night club during the fire of Nov. 28, 1942 in the Back Bay section of Boston. (Credit: AP Photo)
Smoke pours from the Cocoanut Grove night club during the fire of Nov. 28, 1942 in the Back Bay section of Boston. (Credit: AP Photo)
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Movie stars. Artificial palm trees. Big band music. The night of November 28, 1942, promised all the glamour and glitz that made Boston’s most famous night spot, The Cocoanut Grove, legendary. That night, about a thousand revelers gathered to drink and dance the night away.
Just hours later, the club would be no more, reduced to a smoldering husk by a five-alarm fire. Nearly
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But then they cleared his name, saying that the cause of the fire could not be pinpointed. Today, historians think the fire was fueled by a faulty air conditioning system that pumped highly flammable gas into the nightclub during the blaze. Welansky’s greed—from the cheap materials to the shoddy wiring and inferior repairs at the club—seems to have been largely responsible for the fire’s immense death toll. He was convicted of 19 counts of manslaughter for his negligence.
One of the victims of the Cocoanut Grove fire being carried out to safety. (Credit: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images)
One of the victims of the Cocoanut Grove fire being carried out to safety. (Credit: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images)
In the aftermath, officials learned that the building had been given a “good” fire rating the week before the blaze. The fire itself led to changes in fire law. States like Massachusetts now require buildings to have clearly marked exits and outward swinging doors, and forbid revolving doors as the main entrance of a building without nearby doors. Likewise, highly flammable decorations like the ones used by Welansky are now
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“I’ve suffered enough—[been] spit on, called every name in the book and threatened,” he told a reporter in 1972. Tomaszewski visited the graves of the people who died in the fire often, and carried the stigma of his involvement with the nightclub for the rest of his life. As for Welansky, he served a few years in prison. He died soon after he was pardoned by Governor Maurice J. Tobin of Massachusetts—the very mayor whose patronage Welansky had enjoyed at the time of the fire.
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Mary Domsky-Abrams; one of the few to get out of the building, in the beginning of the fire, she recalls talking to one of the managers named: Bonstein. “ As he came near us on that fateful day, one girl asked him, “Mr. Bonstein, why theres is not water buckets?. In case of fire, there would be nothing with which to fight it.” He became enraged at our group of price committee members, and with inhuman anger replied” If you’ll burn, there’ll be something to put out the fire.”
Lighting fixtures consisted of bulbs in cocoanut shells located on six paper palm trees in this room.
One of the deadliest nightclub fires in United States history occurred on May 28, 1977, a busy Memorial Day weekend in the suburbs of Cincinnati. The Beverly Hills Supper Club was a popular nightclub located in Southgate, Campbell County, Kentucky in the greater Cincinnati area. It was located on a hill less than 1000 ft. from the highway on seventeen acres of land just three miles from downtown Cincinnati (Beverly Hills Supper Club Fire D-1). It has since become a case study for its numerous code violations and the behavior of the fire from ignition to building collapse. While there is no one contributing factor to the significant loss of life at this facility, a study of the building’s history, the sequence of the fire’s progression, and an analysis of the fire’s chemistry can provide some valuable lessons to the future firefighter.
Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Station_nightclub_fire Providence Journal http://www.projo.com/extra/2003/stationfire/ National Fire Protection Association http://www.nfpa.org/itemDetail.asp?categoryID=633&itemID=21073&URL=Research%20&%20Reports/Safety%20fact%20sheets/Saf&cookie%5Ftest=1 State of Rhode Island Attorney General’s Office. http://www.riag.ri.gov/misc/station.php -Witness Statements -Grand Jury Testimony -West Warwick Documents The Boston Globe http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/02/02/tentative_deal_set_in_ri_fire_case/ Transcript of Journal interview with Attorney General Lynch.
...days of moonshine wood was used to kindle a fire to heat up the still. This became a red flag for anyone looking for moonshiners. Its very hard to spot the smoke from a still in the dark of the night.
Fires were a very common obstacle at the time, but nothing was even close to the fire of 1871. On October 8th, firefighters received a call from the neighbor of Catherine O’Leary. Neighbors reported seeing a number of flames coming from the cow barn. Firemen instantly spotted the fire, but miscalculated how big it really was. This event was historically known as the Chicago Fire of 1871 (“People 7 Events”).
Due to the size and age of the building (built before 1976), safety regulations said that the nightclub did not have to have a sprinkler system, and it thus did not have one. The fire originating on the stage quickly filled the club with toxic smoke from the burning polyurethane and other building materials. In the shear moment of panic, the people caused a scene of chaotic proportions: stampeding towards the only exit they knew--the way they got in. Over 400 people all trying to get out one door at the same time caused a massive pileup trapping the majority of people inside. Just prior to the fire department arriving on scene the super heated gases trapped in the building ignited causing what is called a “flashover." Temperatures exceeding 932 to 1112 degrees Fahrenheit inst...
The fire started by campers thirty miles north of Winthrop in Okanogan National Forest in the Chewuch river valley. The fire was only 25 acres in size when twenty one Forest Service firefighters were dispatched to the fire.
"Did the Great Chicago Fire Really Start with Mrs. O'Leary's Cow?" HowStuffWorks. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Nov. 2013.
fires in the first week of October, on Saturday night, October 7, a blaze broke
In Corsicana, Texas, Cameron Willingham and his family’s home was burned down the twenty-third of December 1991. According to the report, Cameron was asleep when the fire started and survived the accident with only a few injuries, as for his children they were not so lucky, they lost their lives to the tragic accident. At the time of the accident, Cameron’s wife was buying presents for their children for Christmas. According to a witness, her daughter Diane and Buffie from a few houses down went outside and saw Cameron screaming, “My babies are burning up!” Diane and Cameron tried countless attempts to rescue the girls from their room until the fire department could get there.
...pectors had determined that the reason on which the fire had rapidly spread was due to many structural and design flaws. Wires not being grounded correctly, a fire alarm that never rung or let out a peep. The stairwell which was a critical escape path overwhelmed by smoke. Other defects located in the air conditioning systems, all which helped the smoke spread. Despite of 83 building code violations, no one was ever punished for the lives that were lost. Later, the Hotel was being rebuilt, and the fire marshal had issued for the hotel to pay 192000$ to install sprinklers in the casino room; the clark county building official had rejected for the fire marshal’s charge. Authorities then had said that the automatic sprinkler systems were better off installed in the first place, as they could have prevented the loss many lives and the disaster at the hotel. Even after
Before the fire broke out on Sunday night, October 8, 1871 there had been a large drought causing everything to be dry and extremely flammable. Many fires had been breaking out in Chicago. Records show that in 1870 the fire fighters went to nearly 600 fires. On Saturday night there had been a large fire that destroyed about four blocks and lasted for 16 hours. Another reason why everything in Chicago was so flammable was because almost the entire city was made out of wood. It was a lot worse in the middle class and poor sections of the town (19). Just about every house was made out of wood. Even buildings that claimed to be fire proof had wood roofs covered with tar. The richer part of town had stone and brick homes, but wooden interiors, wooden stables, and wooden storage buildings (Cromie, 81). Chicago was built on marshland and every time it rained the city flooded, so to help this problem the roads were made out of wood and elevated above the waterline. The day the fire started there were over 55 miles of pine-block street and 600 miles of wooden sidewalks. “Chicago in 1871 was a city ready to burn,” according to Jim Murphy, author of The Great Fire (Murphy, 18).
The Great Fire of London, as documented by Samuel Pepys and other writers, began on the early morning of Sunday, September 2nd 1666 when a fire erupted at Pudding Lane in Thomas Farriner’s bakery (Dailey and Tomedi 43). Farriner, who was the king’s baker, went to fetch a candle some time close to midnight. While going to get the candle, Farriner observed that his oven was not lit and that there were no embers. However, two hours later Farriner and his family awoke feeling “almost choked with smoked” (Shields 80). Farriner quickly dashed over to the top of the stairs and found flames making their way up from the shop below. According to Farriner, the fire was not in the proximity of his over nor the pile of wood close to his house (Shields 81). However this and the actual cause of the fire in the house are debatable due to Farriner possibly attempting to remove any blame placed on him from the fire by lying in his testimony of the in...
Sunday September 2, 1666 at 2 a.m. was the day when the fire began (Cowie, 59). It had all began in a baker’s house due to a spark that was “left” in one of his ovens. ‘”, all that was needed was a spark. This was provided at the house of Thomas Farynor, the King’s baker in Pudding Lane…”’ (“London’s Burning: The Great Fire”, 1). In this area was known as a poor area and it was also very dirty. All the houses were made out of wood, which fed the fire and it started to spread. The baker’s house was the first house to burn down and that is also where the first tragedy took place. The wind was strong during this time and as it blew it would push the fire and help it spread through the city. The people started waking up due to the smell of the smoke and they tried to put the fire out as fast as they could. The fire fighters even tired to stop the fire but it was to big for one truck to handle. One of the residents ran to the Mayors house to warm him of what was happening. When told of what was happening, “…the L...