Chicago's Awful Theater Horror Part 16

Charles H. Israels of the firm of Israels & Harder, architects of the new Hudson theater, and several of the large hotels, suggested a number of precautions which might be adopted in New York theaters. Among other things he advocated an ordinance requiring all the theater emergency exits to be used after each performance.

"Nearly every modern theater in this city," Mr. Israels said, "is adequately provided with exits, with which the audience are not familiar, and which are used so seldom that the employes are unused to having the audience pa.s.s out through them. Besides the one exit ordinarily in use there are four emergency exits, and the law requires them to open either on a brick enclosed alley at the side of the theater or directly into the street.

"The people in the gallery, who are in the place of the greatest danger, would undoubtedly become thoroughly accustomed to using these outside stairways.

"The main advantage to be gained by this suggestion over all others is that it could be put into immediate operation without the spending of a single cent on the part of the owners of most of New York's playhouses.

"In a few of the theaters it might be argued that the stairways at the emergency exits were not sufficiently inclosed to allow the crowds to pa.s.s down in safety. The law now requires the stairways to be covered at the top, and covering the outside rail with heavy wire mesh raised about two feet above its present level would prevent any one from falling over the side.

"Fireproof scenery or scenery which will at least not flame, is a practical possibility now. The building code should compel the use of scenery on frames of light metal covered with canvas that has been saturated in a fireproof solution. Fireproof paint is compulsory on the woodwork behind the proscenium wall, but in painting scenery combustible paint may be used.

"The law should be most strictly enforced as to the cleaning out of rubbish beneath the stage. In a number of the theaters of New York this is done only occasionally."

CHAPTER IX.

THIRTY EXITS, YET HUNDREDS PERISH IN AWFUL BLAST.

Those in greatest danger through proximity to the stage did not throw their weight against the ma.s.s ahead. Not many died on the first floor, proof of the contention that some restraint existed in this section of the audience.

Women were trodden under foot near the rear; some were injured. The most at this point, however, were rescued by the determined rush of the policeman at the entrance and of the doorkeeper and his a.s.sistants.

The theater had thirty exits. All were opened before the fire reached full headway, but some had to be forced opened. Only one door at the Randolph street entrance was open, the others being locked, according, it appears, to custom.

From within and without these doors were shattered in the first two minutes after the fire broke out--by theater employes, according to one report, by the van of the fleeing mult.i.tude and the first of the rescuers from the street, according to another.

The doors to the exits on the alley side, between Randolph and Lake streets, in one or more instances, are declared by those who escaped to have been either frozen or rusted. They opened to a.s.saults, but priceless seconds were lost.

Before this time Foy had run back across the stage and reached the alley.

With him fled the members of the aerial ballet, the last of the performers to get out. The aerialists owed their lives to the boy in charge of the fly elevator. They were aloft, in readiness for their flight above the heads of the audience. The elevator boy ran his cage up even with the line of fire, took them in, and brought them safely down.

As Foy and the group reached the outer doorway the stage loft collapsed and tons of fire poured over the stage.

The lights went out in the theater with this destruction of the switchboard and all stage connections. One column of flame rose and swished along the ceiling of the theater. Then this awful illumination also was swallowed up. None may paint from personal understanding that which took place in that pit of flame lit darkness. None lives to tell it.

To those still caught in the structure the light of life went out when the electric globes grew dark.

In spite of the terrible form of their destruction, it came swiftly enough to shorten pain. This at least was true of those who died in the second balcony, striving to reach the alley exits abreast of them.

Six and seven feet deep they were found, not packed in layers but jumbled and twisted in the struggle with one another.

Opposite the westernmost exit of the balcony--on the alley--was a room in the Northwestern University building (the old Tremont house) where painters were working, wiping out the traces of another fire.

They heard the sound of the detonation of the fuse; they heard the rush of feet toward the exit across the way. Out on the iron stairway came a man, pushed by a power behind, himself crazy with fear. He would have run down the iron fire escape, but flames burst out of the exit beneath and wrapped themselves around the iron ladder.

HORRIBLE SIGHT MET THE FIREMEN UPON ENTERING AUDITORIUM.

The postures in which death was met showed how the end had come to many.

A husband and wife were locked so tightly in one another's arms that the bodies had to be taken out together. A woman had thrown her arms around a child in a vain effort to save her. Both were burned beyond recognition.

The sight of the children's bodies broke down the composure of the most restrained of the rescuers. As little form after form was brought out the tears ran down the faces of policemen, firemen and bystanders. Small hands were clenched before childish faces--fruitless attempts at protection from the scorching blast.

Most of the children could be recognized. Fate allowed that thin shadow of mercy. They fell beneath their taller companions. The flames reached them, but they were face downward, other forms were above them, and generally their features were spared.

The persons crowded off the fire escape platform, and those who jumped voluntarily by their own death saved persons on the lower floor from injury. Scores jumped from the exits at the first balcony, the first to death and injury, the ones behind to comparative safety on the thick cushion of the bodies of those who preceded them and who fell from the balcony above. Other hundreds from the main floor jumped on to the same cushion--an easy distance of six feet--without any injury.

When the firemen came they spread nets, but the nets were black, and in the gloom they could not be seen. They saved few lives--argument for the use of white nets hereafter.

The chain of mishaps surrounding the catastrophe extended to the fire alarm. There was no fire alarm box in front of the theater, as at other theaters. A stage hand ran down the alley to South Water street and by word of mouth turned in a "still" alarm to No. 13. The box alarm did not follow for some precious minutes. At least four minutes were lost in this way.

Of the 900 persons seated in the first and second balconies few if any escaped without serious injury.

So fiercely the fire burned during the short time in which hundreds of lives were sacrificed that the velvet cushions of the balcony seats were burned bare.

The crowds fought so in their efforts to escape that they tore away the iron railings of the balconies, leaping upon the people below.

From 3 o'clock, when the alarm was sent in, to 7:30 o'clock, when the doors of the theater were closed, the charred, torn, and blistered bodies were carried from the building at the rate of four a minute. One hundred were taken out across the plank way.

Many blankets filled with fragments of human bodies were taken from the building.

Hundreds of bodies were taken from the building, their clothing gone, their faces charred beyond recognition. Under pretense of serving as rescuers ghouls gained entrance to the theater and robbed the dead and dying in the midst of the fire.

Men fell on their knees and prayed. Men and women cursed. A rush was made for the Randolph street exits. In their fear the crowds forgot the many side exits, and rushed for the doors at which they had entered the theater. Little boys and girls were thrown to one side by their stronger companions.

Ten baskets of money and jewelry thrown in this manner were picked up from the main floor when the fire was extinguished.

Men and women tore their clothing from them. As the first rush was made for the foyer entrance to the balconies men, women and children were thrown bodily down the steps.

A few score of those nearest the doorways escaped by falling or being thrown down the stairs of the main balcony entrances.

Scores were wedged in the doorways, pinned by the force of those behind them. There in the narrow aisle at the balcony entrances they were suffocated and fell--tons of human weight.

All succeeded in leaving their seats in the first balcony. Climbing over the seats and rushing up the slanting aisles to the level aisles above, they fought their way. Those at the bottom of the ma.s.s were burned but little. The top layer of bodies was burned till they never can be identified.

Darkness shrouded the theater with its hundreds of dead when the fire was under control that the building could be entered. The firemen were forced to work in smoky darkness when they started carrying the bodies from the balconies.

THE GALLERY HORROR.

James M. Strong, a Chicago board of trade clerk, the sole survivor of all the occupants of the gallery who tried to escape through the locked door, smashed with his fist a gla.s.s transom and climbed through it. Three members of his family, who followed him down the pa.s.sageway, shared the fate of others. Their bodies since have been discovered, burned almost beyond recognition.

"If the door hadn't been locked hundreds of persons could have saved their lives," said Strong.

The pa.s.sageway, along which Strong and many now dead ran to supposed safety, led toward the front of the theater, past the top entrance to the gallery. Strong had been unable to secure seats and was standing in the rear of the gallery with his mother, Mrs. B. K. Strong, his wife, and his niece, Vera, 16 years old, of Americus, Ga. When the fire started all ran toward the nearest exit.