Our Lady of The Angels School Fire - Fire

Fire

The fire began in the basement of the older north wing between about 2:00 p.m. CST and 2:20 p.m. Classes were due to be dismissed at 3:00 p.m. Ignition took place in a cardboard trash barrel at the foot of the northeast stairwell. The fire smoldered undetected for an estimated 10 to 30 minutes, gradually heating the stairwell and filling it with a light grey smoke that eventually became thick and black.

The smoke began to fill the second floor corridor, but remained unnoticed for a few minutes. At approximately 2:25 p.m., three eighth grade girls, Janet Delaria, Frances J. Guzaldo, and Karen Hobik, returning from an errand came up a different staircase to return to their second floor classroom in the north wing.

The girls encountered thick smoke, making them cough loudly. They hurriedly entered the rear door of Room 211 and promptly notified their teacher, Sister Helaine O'Neill, who was not yet aware of the smoke. O'Neill got up from her desk and began lining up her students to evacuate the building.

When she opened the front door of the classroom moments later to enter the hallway, the intensity of the smoke caused O'Neill to deem it too dangerous to attempt escape down the stairs leading to Avers Avenue on the west side of the building. She remained inside the classroom with her students, awaiting rescue. The fire continued to strengthen, and several more minutes elapsed before the school's fire alarm rang.

About this same time, a window at the foot of the stairwell shattered due to the intense heat, giving the smoldering fire a new oxygen supply. The wooden staircase burst into flames and, acting like a chimney, sent hot gases, fire, and black smoke swirling up the stairwell.

Approximately at this moment, the school’s janitor, James Raymond, saw a red glow through a window while walking by the building. After racing into the basement furnace room, he viewed the fire through a door that led into the stairwell.

After warning two boys who were emptying trash baskets in the boiler room to depart the area, Raymond rushed to the rectory and alerted the housekeeper to call the fire department. He then immediately raced back to the school to begin evacuation via the fire escape. The two boys meanwhile had returned to their class and warned their lay teacher, which prompted her and another lay teacher to lead their students out of classrooms in the annex area of the second floor. The lay teachers had looked in vain for the school principal before deciding to act on their own to vacate the school.

As they left the building, the teacher pulled the fire alarm, but it did not ring. Several minutes later, after leaving her students in the church, she returned to the school and activated the alarm on the second attempt. This alarm rang inside the school, but was not automatically connected to the fire department. By this time, however, the students and teachers in the north wing classrooms on the second floor were essentially trapped, whether they knew about the fire or not.

Despite Raymond's hasty visit to the rectory soon after 2:30 p.m. to spread the alert, there was an unexplained delay before the first telephone call from the rectory reached the fire department at 2:42 p.m. One minute later, a second telephone call was received from Barbara Glowacki, the owner of a candy store on the alley along the north wing.

Glowacki had noticed flames in the northeast stairwell after a passing motorist, Elmer Barkhaus, entered her store and asked if a public telephone was available to call the fire department. Police initially thought this 61-year-old man was a suspect in the blaze until Barkhaus came forward and explained himself. Glowacki used the private telephone in her apartment behind the store to notify authorities.

The first floor landing was equipped with a heavy wooden door, which effectively blocked the fire and heat from entering the first floor hallways. However, the northeast stairwell landing on the second floor had no blocking fire door. As a result, there was no barrier to prevent the spread of fire, smoke, and heat through the second floor hallways. The western stairwell landing on the second floor had two substandard corridor doors with glass panes propped open (possibly by a teacher) at the time of the fire. This caused further drafts of air and an additional oxygen supply to feed the flames. Two other doors were chained open when they should have been closed; these doors were at the first and second floor levels leading into the annex. The upper door was quickly closed, but the lower one remained open throughout the fire.

As the fire consumed the northeast stairway, a pipe chase running from the basement to the cockloft above the second floor false ceiling gave the superheated gases a direct route to the attic. In the attic the temperature rapidly increased until flashover occurred.

The fire then swept down through ventilation grates in the second floor corridor and flashed through the cockloft above the classrooms. Glass transom windows above the doors of each classroom broke as the heat intensified, allowing flames in the hallway to enter the classrooms. By the time the students and their teachers in the second floor classrooms realized the danger, their sole escape route in the hallway was impassable.

For 329 children and 5 teaching nuns, the only remaining means of escape was to jump from their second floor windows to the concrete and crushed rock 25 feet below, or to wait for the fire department to arrive and rescue them. Recognizing the trap they were in, some of the nuns encouraged the children to sit at their desks or gather in a semicircle and pray. Smoke, heat, and flames forced them to the windows. One nun, Sister Mary Davidis Devine, ordered her students in Room 209 to place books and furniture in front of her classroom doors, and this helped to slow the entry of smoke and flames until rescuers arrived. Out of the 55 students in Room 209, eight escaped with injuries, and two died; Beverly Burda, the last student remaining in the room, died when the roof collapsed. Another student, Valerie Thoma, died at a hospital on March 10, 1959.