The Nome Nugget

90 Perish In Chicago Grade School Fire

CHICAGO, (AP) - Fire struck a parochial grade school with terrifying swiftness Monday, trapping pupils and teachers at their desks a few minutes before dismissal time. Ninety perished.

The fire that flashed through Our Lady of the Angels School Monday shortly before closing time cost the lives of 87 children and three nuns.

More than 85 youngsters remained in hospitals.

It was Chicago's most disastrous blaze since the Iroquois Theater holocaust in 1903 and the third worst school fire in the nation in 100 years.

The flames shot up in the two story brick building like fire from a blowtorch. Heat and smoke trapped the victims on the upper floor of the north wing of the U-shaped structure.

Twenty-four bodies were found in one room. Most of them were jammed near windows. Firemen, sickened by the spectacle, said a few of the children were still at their desks, apparently paralyzed by fear and panic.

Others leaped from windows.

The little survivors suffered from burns, bones broken in falls and the shock of the horror they beheld.

Fire Commissioner Robert J. Quinn considered the possibility of arson.

That possibility was raised by the swift spread of the blaze.

"It was the worst thing I have ever seen or ever will see," he said.

Quinn also said the black smoke indicated an oil-type fire.

Investigators pinpointed the place of origin below the street level.

A 38-gallon can was found in a stairwell in that section of the structure. It was taken to the police crime laboratory for careful examination.

Just 18 minutes was the difference between life and death for the 1,300 students and black-robed teachers in the school. The first box alarm was turned in at 2:42 p.m. The school let out at 3 p.m.

Within minutes the building turned into a wild, screaming inferno. Smoke and heat filled staircases and second-floor corridors so fast that normal exits were impassable.

Many children panicked, stampeded to windows. Some leaped to death on sidewalks below.

Nearly all the eighth-grade class in upper-floor classrooms perished.

Screams of children trapped on upper floor drifted down to hundreds of horrified spectators and hysterical parents.

Of the dead, 53 were girls and 34 were boys. The heroic nuns accounted for the other three.