Jackson Advocate

Fire Kills..
(Continued from Page One)
windows from which they kicked "escape-proof" screens or from which a 16-year-old trusty tore the screens from the outside.
L. R. Gaines, 48, Negro superintendent of the Arkansas Negro Boys Industrial School, said there was no one on duty in the dormitory because the attendant was sick and in a Little Rock hospital.
Gov. Orval E. Faubus rushed to the burning school near the little town of Wrightsville.
"There is supposed to be a man in each building to warn the boys of any such disaster as this," he said. He ordered an immediate investigation to find out why the doors were locked if there was no night attendant on duty.
The struggling boys could not budge the screen on one window, and a dozen died in a pile.
The fire broke out in the caretaker's room of the U-shaped building. It spread into the barracks-like dormitory while the boys, 14-17 years old, were asleep, before dawn.
"I woke up when I smelled wood smoke," Archie Ray Poole, 16, said.
"I woke up the guy next to me and asked him if the wood heater had been lit.
"He said, no'. then I saw fire sweeping along the ceiling. I started yelling and ran over to a window to get out. Then I saw Charley, the night sergeant. He was tearing down the window coverings (screens). so I got through that window.
"As I climbed out of the window, I saw several other kids fighting each other to get out the windows. There was a whole lot of screaming and shouting.
"After we got outside. a bunch of us started yelling to the others the way to get out, but there was so much smoke and everything by that time that I guess they didn't hear us.
"I saw one boy with the blood running down his arm where he broke a window at once. Four or five boys would all try to get through the same window at once.
They were all screaming at each other. At another window, four boys were hitting the window covering with a chair, trying to get it off."
Charley Medows, a 16-year-old trusty, acted as night sergeant.
One fire truck from Little Rock went to the fire, but it was out of control when the truck arrived.
Firemen pumped water from a swimming pool to cool the ruins.
"I knew some were caught." Poole said. But not that many.
"I'm out and I'm lucky." another survivor said.
Fire Chief Gann Nalley blamed defective wiring for the fire. The dormitory was one wing of the school. The other wing housed a woodworking shop, with a chapel and other rooms connecting the two wings.
The building was constructed in 1938 by the Works Projects Administration. It was of brick veneer construction; that is, one layer of bricks around an inner structure of wood.
Mr. Gaines said most of the boys in the dormitory were in for minor offenses, such as hubcap stealing. or because their parents had split and there was no place for them to go.
"One of the boys we lost (in the fire) was sent here when he got picked up for soaping windows on Halloween, I understand, Mr. Gaines said.