Pray for the Survivors and 95 Victims, 3 Nuns, 92 Children, Chicago School Fire of 1958

There is a website dedicated to the victims of this horrific tragedy. After reading about the four Sisters of Charity and sixteen other victims killed by terrorists at an old age home in Yemen, I was reminded of one of the worst fires in US history, that which occurred in 1958  at of Our Lady of the Angels school in Chicago. The following account details the horror of that tragedy. All one can say is that it was a Catholic school and those who died we may well hope were all in the state of grace. And they had time to make acts of contrition. May they rest in peace.

On December 1, 1958, a fire broke out in the basement of Our Lady of the Angels catholic school in Chicago, educational home to approximately 1,600 students in Kindergarten through 8th grade. The school was a two story structure built in 1910 but remodeled and added to numerous times in the intervening years. While legally in compliance with the fire safety laws of the time, the school was woefully unprepared for any kind of fire. There was only one fire escape, no sprinklers, no automatic fire alarm, no smoke or heat detectors, no alarm connected to the fire department, no fire-resistant stairwells and no fire-safe doors from the stairwells to the second floor. While the building’s exterior was brick, the interior was made almost entirely of combustibles – stairs, walls, floors, doors and roof – all wood. The floors had been coated and re-coated many times with flammable petroleum based waxes. There were NO fire alarm switches in the north wing, and only two in the entire school, both located in the south wing. Full account is here.