Panic and horror of nightclub fire told by survivors
Guests, caught unawares, become torches; victims scream; burned bodies piled deep at clogged doors; chorus girl saves companions
Boston, Massachusetts (UP) –
The mad panic of a thousand nightclub revelers, trapped in the flaming Cocoanut Grove Nightclub, their screams and cries, the sight of horribly burned bodies piled deep before clogged doors, and men and women converted into torches, were described today by survivors of Saturday night’s tragedy.
Heroic tales – how the captain of the eight-girl chorus kept her wits and led all of them to safety – were also told by the few able to tell a coherent story.
One of the survivors, William Ladd, who was sitting near the orchestra, said the fire developed so quickly it caught the guests unawares.
A girl had just run from the rear of the club, Mr. Ladd said, and spoke to the manager, when:
…there was a flash of flame in the rear.
‘Instantly there was panic’
He said:
Then black smoke came rolling into the main dining room and onto the dance floor.
Men and women began to scream. Instantly there was panic. They jumped up on their chairs, tipped tables and it seemed everybody wanted to be the first to get out.
At a small door on Piedmont St., one woman fell and others rushing on piled up on top of her. It was impossible for them to get out.
Mr. Ladd said that at the main exit, he saw men and women tearing clothes from each other, trying desperately and hopelessly to get through the clogged doorway.
Sight called ‘horrible’
Benjamin Ellis, who was walking past the nightclub at the moment smoke billowed from the front door, said the sight was “horrible.”
He described men and women, in a desperate bid for escape, trampling each other and becoming hopelessly entangled in the mass pressing through the narrow way.
He said:
The doorway was jammed with screaming people, fighting to get out and locked together by pressure from the rear.
Mr. Ellis and other bystanders grabbed a few near the front and pulled them to safety.
He said:
I got a kick in the jaw but what I suffered was nothing to the majority of those I could hear on the inside. The interior was a mass of flames. Those who could not get near the door tried to escape through the windows.
Revolving door blocked
Reho Sandri, 24, a taxicab driver, was parked across the street from the main entrance when the fire started.
He said:
I heard a lot of screaming and then I saw a lot of people crowding up near the revolving door. I got out of the cab and walked over to the door. The door wouldn’t move because the crowd was trying to push it in opposite directions.
Behind the people, all I saw was flames and people raising their hands behind the crowd and screaming the dying in pain. I kicked open the door to the nearby checkroom but nobody was in there.
Then the people starting coming out. They ran out with their clothes on fire. Some of them had their hair on fire and others had their bodies on fire. Some dropped and died on the sidewalk.
Bodies piled on sidewalk
We started carrying bodies to the ambulances. There was such a shortage of stretchers that they piled the bodies on the sidewalk. I counted 38 corpses in a few minutes.
I saw a lady run of the building with her hair on fire. She fell in front of the door and died. I helped carry people to nearby garages.
I saw people with no skin on them at all, and I saw a priest standing near the door and blessing the people as they came out.
The people that didn’t get out in the first few minutes were just goners. That fire came so fast that they didn’t know what happened. I saw nine men go in a minute before it happened and I didn’t see one of them come out.
The cool wit of the captain of the eight-girl chorus probably saved the lives of the girls, who were just ready to start the floor show when the fire broke out.
Chorus captain calm
Dorothy Christie, a member of the chorus, told how Capt. Jackie McGregor calmly gathered the girls together while the flames licked outside the door of their dressing room.
The first thing Jackie did was to make us cover our heads so we could not inhale smoke. The fire was right at our door. None of us had much on but we grabbed what we could. Jackie led us down through the flames and smoke to the basement. I never was so scared in my life. But we kept right on down the stairs.
Jackie never stopped although the smoke was so thick, I thought we’d choke to death right there. I just couldn’t keep it up.
‘Worst thing I’ll ever see’
Jackie and the other girls disappeared in the smoke so I turned back with Claudie Boyle and Mary Jane Courtney and we managed to get back to the dressing room. Then we thought of the window.
I looked out and it seemed like a long way down to the street. It’s two stories from the sidewalk. I could see a lot of people running around and shouting and some others being dragged out with their faces all burned and no dresses on and some men with their hair all burned off – gee, it was the worst thing I’ll ever see.
One jumps from window
Some waiters were under the window and told us to jump. Claudia climbed over the window sill and I held her until some men came under and then she dropped into their arms. Pretty soon, a fireman put a ladder up at the window and Mary Jane and I climbed out and he helped us down.
I don’t know what happened to Jackie and the other girls but they managed to fight their way through the mob and get out a window downstairs somewhere.
Henry Manesian, a trombonist in the orchestra, climbed into a refrigerator in the kitchen, and waited there until he was rescued by firemen.