On the 1st of December, 1958, a fire broke out in the basement of the Our Lady of the
Angels School in Chicago, Illinois.
What started as a small, smouldering fire would grow into an all-consuming blaze that
would devastate the school, and the community that surrounded it… and it would do so despite
sweeping reforms in fire safety that had been enacted decades before; reforms that, by some
measures, should have made the fire at Our Lady of the Angels significantly more survivable.
The Our Lady of the Angels School was made up of several adjacent and interconnected
buildings.
There was a large church, a small rectory, and a U-shaped building that formed the main
part of the school.
This was divided into a north wing built in 1910, and a south wing and adjoining annex
built in 1939.
In the middle of this horseshoe structure was a courtyard protected by a tall iron gate.
Notably, the school had a raised basement – that is a basement that was partially
below ground and partially above.
Basement rooms, therefore, benefitted from windows and natural light… but the raised
basement added to the overall height of the building, with each floor a half-floor higher
than it otherwise might have been.
By 2:00pm on the 1st of December, 1958, the school day was coming to an end.
Teachers were finishing up the day’s lessons, and ensuring that necessary chores were completed.
This included recruiting one or two volunteers to carry wastepaper baskets down to the basement
to be emptied into larger bins there.
The basement was used as a storage space for many things, not just bins.
At the bottom of the northeast stairwell could be found a large cardboard trash barrel, some
bundled newspapers, stacks of old exam books, and a large roll of roofing felt.
It was in amongst this debris that the fire began.
The exact source of ignition has never been definitively determined, although it is theorised
that it might have been a student sneaking a cigarette.
Whatever the cause, a smouldering fire began at the base of the northeast stair, filling
the stairwell with thin grey smoke.
This smoke moved upwards.
It bypassed the lower floor, which was protected by a closed fire door, and began to infiltrate
the corridors of the upper floor.
One of the first people to notice the smoke was the school janitor James Raymond.
After confirming that there was indeed a fire, he ran to the rectory and told the housekeeper
there to call the fire department.
She duly did so, but inadvertently gave them the address of the rectory rather than that
of the main school building.
As the fire grew, it found plenty of fuel inside the school.
Though the outer walls were brick, the interior walls were clad in wood.
Staircases were made of wood, and waxed with petroleum-based products.
Corridors were filled with wooden furniture and children’s coats, as there was no space
for these inside classrooms.
The fire spread quickly, until the heat caused a basement window to shatter.
Now fresh air flowed into the building, feeding the fire still further, and sending flames
and black smoke shooting up into the second floor.
Meanwhile, in room 206, teacher Pearl Tristano was worried when two students she had sent
on an errand returned to her classroom coughing and complaining of smoke in the corridor.
Pearl went next door to room 207, and spoke to Sister Mary Geraldita Ennis.
The pair briefly tried to locate the principal, as this was the agreed-upon procedure in the
event of a fire.
They were unable to do so, but decided that they should evacuate their pupils nonetheless.
Pearl Tristano led the children from room 206 out of the building via a stairwell in
the annex.
Meanwhile, in room 207, the evacuation was delayed when the door to the fire escape was
found to be locked.
With thick black smoke now entering the room, Sister Ennis helped one boy to clamber out
the window.
He used his body weight to lower the fire escape, allowing janitor James Raymond and
parish priest Father Charles Hund to climb up and unlock the door from the outside.
The class evacuated just seconds before their classroom was consumed by flames.
All the students from rooms 206 and 207 were able to escape.
Once they had been safely evacuated to the church, Pearl Tristano returned to the main
building to activate the school fire alarm.
In room 209 sister Mary Davidis Devine was teaching 62 pupils, when the presence of smoke
alerted them to the danger.
Sister Devine ordered her students to barricade the door and wedge books and papers into the
gaps around the frame in an attempt to keep out smoke.
While this was done other pupils gathered at the windows, shouting and throwing things
at the classrooms across the courtyard in an attempt to alert the students there to
the fire.
As they were doing so, the fire alarm finally sounded.
At this point two men arrived on scene.
One was Sam Tortorice – the father of two girls who attended the school.
He had seen smoke from the street and rushed into the building to look for his daughters.
He was joined by Father Joseph Ognibene, whose young cousin also attended the school.
The two men made their way to a window directly adjacent to room 209, and pulled students
one by one across the gap, via a narrow canopy on which they could stand.
Once across, students could exit the school via the staircase in the annex, which was
relatively free of smoke.
Sister Devine insisted on being the last to be rescued, even as the room filled with smoke.
She did eventually leave, when she was certain that no children remained behind… but unfortunately
it would later come to light that one child, a girl named Beverly Burda, had been missed
in the confusion, and had died from the effects of the smoke.
The students in rooms 208, 210 and 211 learned of the fire when smoke began entering their
rooms, or was spotted through transom windows above each classroom door.
These classrooms did not have access to a fire escape, or to an adjacent window, leaving
the pupils there with few options.
As the smoke worsened, many resorted to jumping… even though it was a significant drop of around
7.5 metres (or 25 feet) to the ground below.
People from nearby homes, seeing smoke, ran to the scene of the fire.
They gathered in the courtyard, and used blankets to try and catch children as they fell.
Fire engines arrived, but went initially to the rectory, as this was the address the housekeeper
had given them.
People on scene quickly redirected them to the school… but even then firefighters couldn’t
bring equipment into the courtyard due to the iron gate that blocked entry to it.
Firefighters and bystanders used firefighting ladders to knock down the gate so that engines
could enter, and more than a hundred children were subsequently rescued by firefighters
climbing up ladders and pulling them from the smoke-filled rooms.
In total, the fire took the lives of 92 children, and three teachers.
Two additional deaths were recorded, including one man who suffered a heart attack at the
sight of burned school, and another who suffered a stroke while trying to catch children who
were jumping from the windows.
In the aftermath of the fire, multiple investigations were launched.
A report by the National Fire Protection Association was extremely critical of the school and of
the city, even going so far as to call the Our Lady of the Angels School a “fire trap”.
It had good reason to use this language.
The city of Chicago had already suffered several catastrophic fires, including the devastating
Iroquois Theatre fire.
This disaster had been followed by significant reform, with fire codes updated to make future
fires less likely and less deadly.
Unfortunately, some exemptions had been made, with older buildings – like the Our Lady
of the Angels School – subject to a “grandfather clause”.
This meant that, rather than having to retrofit their buildings to comply with new regulations,
it was enough to keep them compliant with regulations as they had stood when the buildings
were constructed.
The Our Lady of the Angels School, having been built in 1910, had only one fire escape,
no automatic fire alarm and no sprinklers.
The inside was packed with combustible materials.
Fire escape doors were sometimes locked, and it was a standing rule that only the principal
could activate the fire alarm – which, in any event, could only be activated by two
small, unmarked switches in the south wing of the school.
Transom windows above the doors of most classrooms provided an easy route for smoke to spread,
and fire extinguishers were deliberately mounted high up, out of reach of children.
Despite all this, the school had passed its most recent fire safety inspection.
This was entirely due to its age.
A newer building with the same flaws would not, by any means, have passed.
The president of the National Fire Protection Association at the time, said: "There are
no new lessons to be learned from this fire; only old lessons that tragically went unheeded."
Thankfully, on this occasion, changes were made in the aftermath of the fire.
Within a year, more than 16,000 buildings across the country had been updated to be
more fire safe.
Within Chicago, new fire alarms were installed in almost all schools and high-capacity venues,
and more than 1,000 schools across the city were earmarked for the installation of sprinkler
systems.
The ruins of the Our Lady of the Angels School were demolished, and a new school with the
same name was built a few streets away.
It was compliant with all relevant fire safety regulations, and remained in use until 1999.
While the fire at the Our Lady of the Angels School was devastating to the city of Chicago,
it did finally prompt dramatic change – change that might well have prevented another equally
deadly fire in the years since.