On the 20th of December 1970, hundreds of people were attending a Christmas party at
the Pioneer Hotel in Tucson, Arizona.
While guests dined and danced, residents slept peacefully in the rooms above… until just
after midnight, when a fire began on the fourth floor of the hotel – a fire that would go
on to become the deadliest in Arizona’s history.
Built in 1929, the Pioneer Hotel was one of Tucson’s first high-rise buildings.
Upon its opening, the hotel’s promotional material claimed that the hotel was “absolutely
fire-proof”.
It was equipped with standpipe connections on each floor of the hotel, two external fire
escapes, and a smoke tower which was designed to provide firefighters easy access to the
upper floors in the event of a fire.
Whilst these fire safety measures were commendable for the time when the hotel was built, the
building would not be considered fireproof by modern standards.
There was, for example, no sprinkler system, no centralised alarm, and an abundance of
flammable materials such as wood and fabric used in the finish of the hotel.
This finish – which included a great deal of plush carpet and wooden furniture – was
only fitting for a hotel as glamorous as the Pioneer.
It was built by businessman Albert Steinfeld and his son, Harold Steinfeld, who later took
over sole ownership of the hotel after his father’s death in 1935.
Even after selling the hotel in 1963, Harold and his wife continued to live permanently
in its penthouse.
As well as being a popular place to stay, the hotel was also known for its lively banquets,
dances, and conventions.
It was the obvious choice for tourists visiting the city, as well as for locals looking to
organise a high-profile event.
Visiting celebrities often stayed at the Pioneer, and it was a particular favourite of well-to-do
families from the Mexican state of Sonora, for whom it was more or less tradition to
stay at the Pioneer when visiting Tucson.
The hotel was, indeed, such a part of the fabric of the town that it was commonly said
that, “If you grew up in Tucson, you grew up at the Pioneer Hotel.”
On the night of the 20th of December, 1970, the hotel was host to more than 700 guests.
In addition to those staying on a temporary or permanent basis in the hotel’s many rooms,
there was also large event taking place that night.
Hughes Aircraft, now known as Raytheon, was holding its annual Christmas party in the
hotel's ballroom, with around 350 people in attendance.
Just after midnight, the fire started in two different places on the fourth floor of the
hotel.
It had plenty of fuel at its disposal, including flammable carpeting, wooden furniture, wallpaper
and Christmas decorations.
Feeding on this abundant material, it quickly spread from the fourth floor all the way up
to the 11th, aided by open stairwells that acted like chimneys.
Guests at the Hughes Aircraft party, as well as those who were resident on the lower floors,
flooded from the hotel through any available exit.
Some staff lingered to try and extinguish the flames, before quickly realising that
the blaze was out of control.
Within just minutes, the fire was firmly established.
Hundreds of guests were trapped on the upper floors of the building, separated from safety
by a solid barrier of smoke and flames.
At 12:19am, the city's emergency dispatchers received three separate calls reporting a
fire at the Pioneer Hotel.
Many firefighters initially assumed that these were simply a bout of prank calls, and only
realised that the situation was real when they saw an orange glow on the city’s skyline.
Within minutes, three fire engines and two ladder trucks were on scene.
Upon arrival, they immediately called for all available back up.
Another eight engines and over 200 firemen flocked to the hotel to help.
The available ladders were approximately 30 metres (or 100 feet) long – meaning that
they could only access the first eight storeys of the 11-storey building.
Guests who were trapped on those three inaccessible floors were left in a dire situation.
Some attempted to escape by knotting together bedsheets and clambering down the outside
of the building until they were low enough to be rescued by ladder – a desperate tactic
that nonetheless did allow at least some guests to escape with their lives.
Six guests were able to shimmy down a copper pipe on the side of the building until they
were low enough to be rescued by ladder.
Others were not so fortunate.
There are reports of guests jumping from their windows.
In some cases they threw out mattresses first, in an attempt to soften their landing.
In other cases, it is possible that they knew they would not survive, but had no other way
to escape the all-consuming flames.
After rescuing many people from the exterior of the building, firefighters pumped water
through the 7th and 8th floor windows, then entered the building and began to battle the
fire from inside.
It was a complicated operation – made more so by the fact that the hotel did not have
signs in the stairwells indicating which floor was which.
Firefighters were often uncertain exactly where they were in the building at any given
time.
Furthermore, there were only a small number of radios available.
With firefighters spread throughout the building, communication became difficult.
To help answer the constant calls for more resources, caches of firefighting and rescue
equipment were established within the burning building.
The fire was eventually brought under control by 1:16am, less than an hour after emergency
services had arrived on scene.
A systematic search of the building ensued, during which it was established that 28 people
had perished in the fire.
The one-time owner of the building, Harold Steinfeld, and his wife were included in this
number.
One further person would die later in hospital, bringing the total death toll to 29 – the
single biggest loss of life in a building fire in the entire history of Tucson.
An investigation followed, and it was quickly established that the fire had been started
simultaneously in two separate locations on the fourth floor, leading investigators to
conclude that it had been a deliberate arson.
Soon after, Tucson police arrested Louis Taylor, a 16 year-old of mixed black and Mexican descent,
who had been at the hotel that night.
Tucson police accused him of starting the fire so that he could use the diversion to
steal possessions from the hotel rooms, which Taylor denied.
He admitted that he had instead been quietly gatecrashing the Hughes Aircraft Christmas
party to try and score some free drinks.
When the fire began Taylor had been seen by several people assisting with the evacuation
and putting his own life at risk in an unsuccessful attempt to extinguish the flames.
Despite this, Taylor was convicted of starting the fire.
He was ultimately given 28 life sentences, and remained in prison for decades despite
constantly maintaining his innocence.
Many people were sympathetic to Taylor, noting that some evidence against him had been admitted
unlawfully, that the evidence that the cause of the fire was arson was flimsy, and that
the police had made no efforts to investigate other suspects once Taylor had been arrested.
Finally, in 2012, the Arizona Justice Project asked the court to dismiss Taylor’s case.
They claimed that it would not be possible to determine that the fire was arson using
modern forensic methods, and that Taylor had been treated unfairly.
His arrest had come at a time when racial and class tension in Tucson were high, and
that this had contributed to his conviction despite very little legally admissible evidence
of guilt.
Finally, in 2013, Taylor was released after agreeing to a “no contest” plea.
In the years which followed the fire, many changes were made to fire safety regulations
in Arizona.
At the insistence of the Tucson Fire department, Tucson adopted a standardised fire code in
1975.
The code required all buildings over a certain height to have sprinklers and smoke alarms,
smokeproof stairwells, panic doors, and non-flammable carpet, wallpaper and furniture.
These new standards were applied to high-rises across the city, including the Pioneer Hotel.
The fire and smoke damage were repaired and the entire building was refurbished.
For a few more years it operated as a hotel, but with the fire still fresh in the minds
of local residents it was no longer the desirable destination it once was.
In 1975 it was sold, and converted into an office building.
It remains in place to this day.
The Tucson Fire department itself also underwent numerous changes.
In the wake of the fire their budget was significantly increased, allowing them to acquire new equipment
and new staff, and to provide emergency medical training for firefighters.
As a direct result of the fire, the Tucson Fire Department became stronger, better equipped,
and more ready to face disasters that might take place in the future.
In the words of the Tucson Fire Department Chief, “Many of the practices in place today
within the Tucson Fire Department are directly related to this event; helping make Tucson
a safer community in which to live, work and play for all.”