Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
Speaker 1: and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and Jerry's over there.
Speaker 1: The gang's all here, which means that it's time for
Speaker 1: stuff you should know, So settle down, everybody be quiet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the hotel fire edition, which will not be chuck full
Speaker 1: of laughs probably No, No, I really won't. Um. I
Speaker 1: don't know what it is about hotel fires that always
Speaker 1: fascinated me, but they did. I think it was the
Speaker 1: MGM Grand fire that got me. Um. Yeah, but there's
Speaker 1: just something extra creepy about a hotel fire to me. Um.
Speaker 1: And it turns out that there are there have been
Speaker 1: some some big ones and some bad ones, and in
Speaker 1: this one particular year, and of them happened that America
Speaker 1: finally got off it stuff and started doing something about it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And also while reading this, I was I was kind
Speaker 1: of thinking, like, why weren't there a dozen more of
Speaker 1: these that year or in any surrounding year when you
Speaker 1: look at how uh well, how unsafe things were, and
Speaker 1: how you know, I know, people complain about the government
Speaker 1: regulating things, but yeah, sometimes it's nice to say you
Speaker 1: should have fire sprinklers and fire alarms or you can't
Speaker 1: do business. Yeah, that's a really good point, and this
Speaker 1: is a great example of that. You're right. It's also
Speaker 1: a great example of how people smoking can used to
Speaker 1: be able to just kill dozens or scores of people
Speaker 1: by falling asleep with a cigarette or tossing it somewhere
Speaker 1: or something stupid. You know. Yeah, I mean one of
Speaker 1: these hotels had uh And we'll get into the nitty
Speaker 1: gritty of the just how flammable these places were back then.
Speaker 1: And it's amaze using the uh steps that they've taken
Speaker 1: over the years to make things UH safer. But I
Speaker 1: think one of these places had like seven layers of
Speaker 1: wallpaper upon wallpaper, which were all highly highly flammable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like there burlap walls sometimes like stuff that just if
Speaker 1: you look at it wrong, it'll catch fire. It's like,
Speaker 1: what did you just say, Yeah, I'm catching fire. They
Speaker 1: were using Firebug special brand wallpaper that bad. It wouldn't
Speaker 1: surprise me. Well, of course they wouldn't do that, but everything,
Speaker 1: I don't know, it was just everything was really flammable.
Speaker 1: It seemed like flammable, dangerous pajamas were very flammable. This
Speaker 1: everything was flammable back then, way more than these days.
Speaker 1: All the things you smoke in right, smoking jackets were flammable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: cigarettes flammable. So this this one year, so there were
Speaker 1: tons and tons of hotel fires, like it was, it
Speaker 1: was a thing. Um. But in nineteen forty six it
Speaker 1: just got particularly bad and it was just coincidence. There
Speaker 1: wasn't anything really that connected these fires, but there were
Speaker 1: a handful of hotel fires that year that happened quickly
Speaker 1: enough and we're big enough or or it happened um
Speaker 1: close enough to one another, i should say, and then
Speaker 1: we're big enough had enough of a casualties in um
Speaker 1: deaths from them that that it caught the attention of
Speaker 1: the public and and something was finally done. And it
Speaker 1: was nineteen six when it happened. And the first one
Speaker 1: was in June, yes, June five, in Chicago, Illinois, the
Speaker 1: LaSalle Hotel. Uh. So here's how this one went down.
Speaker 1: That was it was after the school year had ended,
Speaker 1: so this hotel was really packed. Um, A lot of
Speaker 1: families would and still do if you live in in
Speaker 1: the suburbs of rural areas, would flood into the city
Speaker 1: after the school year. They bring their kids, they go shopping,
Speaker 1: they go to the zoo, they do city things. Uh
Speaker 1: as you know, sort of like a post school vacation.
Speaker 1: And so all of this hotel was full, one thousand rooms.
Speaker 1: Apparently we're fully occupied and uh like so many of
Speaker 1: these they started late at night. Yeah, and the cocktail lounge,
Speaker 1: the Silver Grill cocktail lounge on the ground floor of
Speaker 1: the LaSalle, and the cocktail wait staff had a longstanding
Speaker 1: method of disposing of cigarette butts at the end of
Speaker 1: the night from all the ash trays, from the empty
Speaker 1: the ash trays, They just dump them in a cardboard
Speaker 1: box that they kept in a closet behind the bar. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I thought you were gonna say they had a way
Speaker 1: of getting people out of the bar, which is crank. Now,
Speaker 1: usually you crank. What was that really bad band that
Speaker 1: everyone hates Special No, that's when everyone loves it. Was
Speaker 1: a Canadian band that everyone makes fun of all the time. Rush. No,
Speaker 1: you can say they cranked and nickelback. No, that although
Speaker 1: I don't know what that would have done to people
Speaker 1: in their minds might have been blown. Maybe they were
Speaker 1: a band out of time and place. Yeah, uh so
Speaker 1: they didn't. They didn't um blare any nickelback. Everybody just
Speaker 1: left on their own accord. But after they left, this
Speaker 1: box of smoldering cigarette butts cardboard box of smoldering cigarette
Speaker 1: butts in the closet in one of the world's most
Speaker 1: flammable hotels, UM caught like their luck ran out. I
Speaker 1: can't believe that it didn't happen sooner, but that's what
Speaker 1: happened this Um. Somebody I think smelled smoke, and very
Speaker 1: quickly after that, Um, they saw a little bit of
Speaker 1: flames coming from beneath the paneling around the wall. Right. No,
Speaker 1: but here's a mistake. Number two comes in, chuck. And
Speaker 1: this is a recurring theme too with these hotel fires. Um,
Speaker 1: everyone said we got this, and some drunken people went
Speaker 1: and grabbed a Seltzer bottle and started to try to
Speaker 1: put the fire out themselves. Yeah. I mean it's hard
Speaker 1: to or rather it's easy to cast stones in the
Speaker 1: year two thousand eighteen. But I imagine if I was
Speaker 1: hammered at a bar at two twenty in the morning
Speaker 1: and I saw a little smoke in a little flame,
Speaker 1: my first reaction would probably be like man let's extinguish
Speaker 1: this real quick and not let me run and call
Speaker 1: the fire department. But that's exactly what you should always do,
Speaker 1: is running call the fire department. Yeah, that's that's I mean,
Speaker 1: that's what I learned from researching this is that's the implication.
Speaker 1: Just don't don't assume that you can handle any fire.
Speaker 1: That's what the fire department is there for. They're more
Speaker 1: than happy to come out to your call and um
Speaker 1: deal with it. And you don't have to be embarrassed.
Speaker 1: If it was just a little fire, sure they'll make
Speaker 1: fun of you, but it will be behind your back. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But this one was especially egregious because apparently from that
Speaker 1: moment that they saw those flames and smelled the smoke,
Speaker 1: it took about fifteen minutes before anybody called the fire department,
Speaker 1: apparently because they were arguing over or concerned at least
Speaker 1: over who had the authority in the hotel to call
Speaker 1: the fire department, which I don't get. There was a
Speaker 1: protocol like you had to be of a certain level
Speaker 1: of management, I believe, to to officially call in a
Speaker 1: fire call to the fire department. Yeah. I think anybody
Speaker 1: who sees the flames should be qualified to call the
Speaker 1: fire department, right, Yeah, but that was a huge, huge delay.
Speaker 1: Fifteen minutes in this place, as you'll see, um was
Speaker 1: a big deal and what matter, that's all it took
Speaker 1: rather that fifteen minutes. Yeah too, like it was done
Speaker 1: after that. Yeah, And they figured out pretty quickly when
Speaker 1: they ran it to um tell the manager that it
Speaker 1: was on fire. After they tried that seltzer bottle thing. Um,
Speaker 1: I think the flames just went and they started. They
Speaker 1: all ran away because they saw that this was this
Speaker 1: is bad. And then there was another fifteen minutes on
Speaker 1: top of that. And in the meantime, this sal's cocktail
Speaker 1: lounge and actually a lot of the lobby had just
Speaker 1: been redone in this nicely veneered wood um and everything
Speaker 1: flammable that they could possibly come up with. And so
Speaker 1: that fifteen minutes was very substantial and letting this fire
Speaker 1: really get going. Yeah, they said, hey, we have this
Speaker 1: great new uh bar and lounge, but we need to
Speaker 1: ventilate it because everyone's smoking. So we're gonna cut a
Speaker 1: hole in the elevator shaft and all of a sudden
Speaker 1: you have a chimney, and that'll be a common thread.
Speaker 1: Here is just how many big open areas, whether it
Speaker 1: be a trans and window above the room doors being open,
Speaker 1: which happened a lot back then because there wasn't air
Speaker 1: conditioning in these buildings. It's a big point. Uh. It
Speaker 1: just really exacerbates of fire once it gets going. And
Speaker 1: with a little sal in particular, the fact that they
Speaker 1: had cut a hole, an air hole from the place
Speaker 1: where the fire started into a central open shaft going
Speaker 1: up into the hotel. Um. That's one thing, but leading
Speaker 1: into this this um elevator shaft, there were also air
Speaker 1: holes on every floor because these fire doors that were
Speaker 1: supposed to close off each floor from the central stairwell
Speaker 1: have been propped open to allow air to flow through better.
Speaker 1: And then like you said, there were windows above the
Speaker 1: doors that were open a little bit, the transoms, and
Speaker 1: that was letting in air from the outside into the
Speaker 1: hotel itself. So the flames and the smoke and the
Speaker 1: fumes were able to just rise that much more quickly
Speaker 1: because of the series of little, tiny decisions that individual
Speaker 1: people had made that all came together to turn this
Speaker 1: thing into a conflagration. Yeah, and I'm not sure if
Speaker 1: it was a little sal or one of the other
Speaker 1: ones but that they all seemed to have trans and
Speaker 1: they all seemed to make a big difference because they
Speaker 1: were largely open because one of them, uh, they found
Speaker 1: in the rooms where the transoms were closed, the fire
Speaker 1: damage wasn't so bad, but in the ones where they
Speaker 1: were open, they were just you know, gutted. Right. So
Speaker 1: there was, um a few things that happened. Right as
Speaker 1: this fire is getting really bad. Um the fire department
Speaker 1: starts to show up, and ultimately three firefighters from sixty
Speaker 1: one companies showed up to this fire to fight it,
Speaker 1: which is just an enormous amount even for back then,
Speaker 1: especially for back then. Um. And they're not just firefighters,
Speaker 1: there are actually people at the hotel who were working
Speaker 1: to save lives. In particular, Chuck, there was a switchboard
Speaker 1: operator at the hotel who stayed on to call individual
Speaker 1: rooms because this fire started after midnight, so most of
Speaker 1: the people in the hotel were in their rooms asleep.
Speaker 1: So this operator was calling every room and saying, there's
Speaker 1: a fire, get out of the hotel and hang up
Speaker 1: and call the next one. And she actually died in
Speaker 1: the fire because she stayed on to call as many
Speaker 1: rooms as possible. And the fact that more people didn't die.
Speaker 1: Out of more than a thousand people, ultimately sixty one died.
Speaker 1: You can basically attribute to this this lady's heroism for
Speaker 1: staying on and giving her life to to tell as
Speaker 1: many people as as possible that there was a fire
Speaker 1: in the hotel. Yeah, that's amazing. And and she had
Speaker 1: to do that because there was no alarm system, so
Speaker 1: not even a bell ringing out. I think he said
Speaker 1: three hundred firefighters in. Only three of these fire units
Speaker 1: in the entire city had two way radios, so the
Speaker 1: word couldn't get around fast enough. In the end, they
Speaker 1: got about sixty UM units there, but by that time
Speaker 1: it was just too little, too late. But the fact,
Speaker 1: like you said, I mean, this had more guests than
Speaker 1: any of the other hotels staying there, and the fact
Speaker 1: that only sixty one people died out of the thousand
Speaker 1: is it's pretty amazing. Yeah. There there was also another
Speaker 1: pair of heroes who were I think sailors um They
Speaker 1: rescued twenty seven people between the two of them. They
Speaker 1: just kept running back into the hotel and dragging people out. Amazing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is amazing what like something like that does to people,
Speaker 1: To some people brings out just amazing stuff in them,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah. So two weeks later, on June nineteenth,
Speaker 1: I mean, America was still sort of recovering from this news. Uh,
Speaker 1: nineteen people died at the Hotel Canfield in Dubuque, Iowa.
Speaker 1: And it really was eerily similar. Like it seemed like
Speaker 1: none of these buildings had sprinklers or alarms. They were
Speaker 1: all highly combustible. They all had these big open staircases,
Speaker 1: and the fire doors were open, right, And an open
Speaker 1: fire door is not a fire door, no, And I
Speaker 1: mean like they had like good fire doors. But if
Speaker 1: it's open, yeah, it's it's just a really easy place
Speaker 1: for smoke and fire and aired feed the fire to
Speaker 1: just move through. Um. And the at the at the Canfield,
Speaker 1: I think that I think they had built onto the hotel,
Speaker 1: the hotel, and you said this is a Dubuke, Iowa, right,
Speaker 1: They had originally built the hotel and then added on
Speaker 1: and the news the new section was doing fairly well.
Speaker 1: But when the um when the the old section, which
Speaker 1: is where the cocktail lounge was where the fire started again. Um,
Speaker 1: the uh, when that burned, like that burned substantially, they
Speaker 1: had to tear it down afterward, and I have to
Speaker 1: correct myself. I made fun of the Lassalle's wait staff
Speaker 1: for um, putting the cigarette butts into a box. No one,
Speaker 1: no one in Chicago would do something that careless. You
Speaker 1: would have to live in Dubuke to do something that careless.
Speaker 1: Because it was actually at the Canfield where that fire
Speaker 1: was started like that. Yeah, there was an employee who
Speaker 1: opened that little closet, uh, also known as the cigarette
Speaker 1: dumping room. I guess at the back of the lounge.
Speaker 1: Um by this time that the bar had emptied out.
Speaker 1: And uh, this this kid you know again doesn't call
Speaker 1: immediately the fire department. He runs to find the manager,
Speaker 1: which you know, a kid working there again, I don't
Speaker 1: that may have been protocol, but you're you're probably trained
Speaker 1: to go tell the manager of any anything like that.
Speaker 1: And one William Canfield was a manager. He actually didn't
Speaker 1: call right away either. He ran to get a fire extinguisher,
Speaker 1: ran back there. Everything was fully on fire. Hammed HAMMEDA. Yeah,
Speaker 1: at that point he knew what was going on. And uh,
Speaker 1: you know, some of these people burned to death, many
Speaker 1: of them on the upper floors, uh, were affixiated by smoke.
Speaker 1: And another recurring thing that you'll see is people jumping
Speaker 1: into nets or climbing down sheets tied together, or fire escapes.
Speaker 1: Some of them made it. Some of them, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think a lot of the ones who tied their bed
Speaker 1: sheets into ropes and and shimmy down actually did make it. Um.
Speaker 1: But I think ultimately there were um thirty people who
Speaker 1: were rescued jumping into nets, seven were carried down by ladders, um.
Speaker 1: And there were a hundred guests that managed to escape.
Speaker 1: I think the total number of guests who died were nineteen.
Speaker 1: Nineteen people died, So again, it could have been a
Speaker 1: lot worse. The fire department hadn't have gotten as many
Speaker 1: people out, or as many people hadn't have like, you know,
Speaker 1: made their own ropes to shimmy down. But again, this
Speaker 1: was like less than two weeks after the fire in
Speaker 1: Chicago and two days chuck. Again, this is making national news,
Speaker 1: these huge fires, right, people stayed in hotels. It was
Speaker 1: like a big deal if if a lot of people
Speaker 1: died in a hotel fire. Two days after the Canfield
Speaker 1: Hotel in Dubuque in June, on June one, there was
Speaker 1: another fire and this was was in Dallas at the
Speaker 1: Baker Hotel. Yeah, and this one seems to be uh
Speaker 1: like the hot Shot placed to be the luxury hotel
Speaker 1: in the city. Uh. Not only did it host people
Speaker 1: from at like you know, high falutin people from out
Speaker 1: of town, but they had several you know, well to
Speaker 1: do restaurants in ballrooms and things. So many locals uh
Speaker 1: hung out here as well, like uh like the big
Speaker 1: bands and the swing bands of the twenties and thirties
Speaker 1: would play here, but they were forced to wear stets
Speaker 1: and hats when they did, probably so this was local custom. Uh.
Speaker 1: And this was a gas explosion at this one, um,
Speaker 1: so it wasn't the fault of someone dumping cigarette butts
Speaker 1: or anything like that. Uh. And ten people ended up
Speaker 1: dying in this one, injured over forty. And the only
Speaker 1: reason that this one seemed to have a um they
Speaker 1: got away lighter lighter with the death count was that
Speaker 1: it was in a sub basement and it never fully
Speaker 1: like went through the rest of the hotel. Right. But
Speaker 1: again this is so three fires in the month of
Speaker 1: June claimed the lives of ninety people, one right after
Speaker 1: the other. And this has America's attention, right, But really,
Speaker 1: the whole thing just kind of set the stage for
Speaker 1: what would be the worst hotel fire in the history
Speaker 1: of the United States. Um, that would come in December,
Speaker 1: and we'll take a break and we'll get to the
Speaker 1: Wine Cough Hotel fire after this. So we're in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: Georgia right literally and in the way back machine. Okay,
Speaker 1: because this happened in Atlanta, and we briefly mentioned this
Speaker 1: in one episode a while back and said, hey, we
Speaker 1: should do an episode on that. Did we I can't
Speaker 1: remember why, but we mentioned it and um or maybe
Speaker 1: as a listener mail or something. But here we are
Speaker 1: making good for once on a promise. Yeah, not even
Speaker 1: remembering that we've made the promise, just stumbling backwards into
Speaker 1: fulfilling that promise. It may have been skyscrapers, because the
Speaker 1: Wine Coff Hotel in Atlanta was fifteen stories high and
Speaker 1: when it was built in nineteen thirteen, it was one
Speaker 1: of it was considered a skyscraper in one of Atlanta's
Speaker 1: first right. Um, yeah, fifteen stories in nineteen thirteen, that's
Speaker 1: nothing to sneeze at, especially in Atlanta too, Right. Is
Speaker 1: there a website converter for how many stories that would be? Today?
Speaker 1: Let's see it's fifty thousand, big Max Tall. UM. So
Speaker 1: the the Wine coff is actually still around today. It's
Speaker 1: called the Ellis Hotel now down by UM Philips Arena
Speaker 1: downtown UM. And back in n like you said, it
Speaker 1: was a it was a pretty swine hotel in the
Speaker 1: Atlanta area. UM. And this was in December, December seven,
Speaker 1: that was the fifth anniversary of Pearl Harbor. And there
Speaker 1: were a pretty decent amount of people staying in the
Speaker 1: Wine Cough that night. I think, um, how many was
Speaker 1: it a thousand? No, a couple of hundred. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: it was a thousand who were in the LaSalle, But
Speaker 1: there was, um, I think three hundred people staying in
Speaker 1: the Wine Cough. People from out of town, A lot
Speaker 1: of them from out of town, people who were shopping
Speaker 1: for Christmas. There was a contingent of high school kids
Speaker 1: from Rome who were Rome Georgia much different, who were
Speaker 1: um part of the tri hi Y, which is a
Speaker 1: Christian group, and they had come because they were going
Speaker 1: to be take place in a mock legislature. And then um,
Speaker 1: there were a lot of Vets returning from World War Two.
Speaker 1: There's just a lot of people hanging out in the
Speaker 1: wine cough that night. Yeah, and this one we should
Speaker 1: point out this, Like so many buildings and especially hotels
Speaker 1: at the time, we're advertised as fireproof. Um. Obviously, pre
Speaker 1: even fires were a problem, and it was probably on
Speaker 1: people's minds, so they started things like the unsinkable Titanic
Speaker 1: and fireproof buildings, like things were being touted as safe
Speaker 1: and somewhat indestructible. But but by this time, Chuck, I
Speaker 1: would have been like, well, I'm staying away from that
Speaker 1: because because it's basically tempting fade apparently, because when you
Speaker 1: call something unsinkable or fireproof, it burns to the ground
Speaker 1: or sinks. Yeah. But here's the thing. The outside was fireproof, Okay,
Speaker 1: So that there was I guess there was some fine
Speaker 1: print there, because as you said, the ls Hotel still stands,
Speaker 1: and at the end of this horrible fire, which we're
Speaker 1: gonna detail, uh, the outside was still okay. It was
Speaker 1: the inside where all the people and stuff are that
Speaker 1: matters and was not fireproof at all. Right, So this one,
Speaker 1: the Wine Coff Hotel fire. Again, it's the worst hotel
Speaker 1: fire in the United States history. Hopefully it stays that
Speaker 1: way forever. Um. But it was started by a mystery.
Speaker 1: They still are not entirely sure what happened. But at
Speaker 1: about three am on December seven, uh, somebody, no, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: It was the elevator operator who was traveling up and
Speaker 1: down the elevator just doing her thing, and around the
Speaker 1: fifth floor she noticed that she smelled smoke. So she
Speaker 1: bolts all the way down to the ground floor and
Speaker 1: runs out in a lobby and starts shouting fire, and
Speaker 1: that kicks off a series of events that, um, they're
Speaker 1: pretty substantial. Yeah, And keep in mind this fireproof hotel.
Speaker 1: Not only did it have no sprinkler system and no
Speaker 1: alarm system like seemingly every other building, there were no
Speaker 1: fire doors and no fire escapes, so it seemed especially
Speaker 1: fire prone, not fireproof at all. But I wonder if
Speaker 1: they were saying, we don't even need that stuff because
Speaker 1: this building is fireproof. Maybe, but boy, I mean they
Speaker 1: didn't think that through at all, because uh, yeah, like
Speaker 1: I said, what's on the inside counts. If the inside
Speaker 1: is on fire, it doesn't matter if like, well, the
Speaker 1: bricks still solid, guys, you know, still standing. The structure
Speaker 1: is all right. So there are a couple of theories
Speaker 1: as to how this one started. Um, there were a
Speaker 1: group of dudes. They're playing poker. Um just met up
Speaker 1: in a room to play a game of poker or
Speaker 1: play poker all night, and they were on the third floor.
Speaker 1: Some people say that it started with a mattress in
Speaker 1: the hallway outside their suite. So someone that was in
Speaker 1: this game got ticked off, left the room and set
Speaker 1: this mattress on fire on purpose. Yes, man named Roy McCulloch,
Speaker 1: who was an ex con and then a con again
Speaker 1: later on, whom had allegedly seen a guy who rated
Speaker 1: him out in prison, and that he'd set the fire
Speaker 1: after he left the poker game because he was trying
Speaker 1: to kill the guy and ended up killing a hundred
Speaker 1: nineteen people. That's actually the position of a pair of
Speaker 1: journalists UM named Sam Hayes and Alan Goodwin, who wrote
Speaker 1: The Wine Calf Fire, a book. They very squarely placed
Speaker 1: the whole thing on Roy McCullough's shoulders. Yeah, but that
Speaker 1: is just a theory because other people in the Mayor
Speaker 1: of Atlanta, mayor Hartsfield at the time did invite fire
Speaker 1: experts in to to look it over, and I think
Speaker 1: they kind of roundly that it was not some mattress
Speaker 1: set on fire deliberately because people smelled like burning gas
Speaker 1: or tires or some weird specific smoke spell smoke smell,
Speaker 1: and they thought that there was an accelerant and it
Speaker 1: was in another part of the hotel. It wasn't near
Speaker 1: the mattress at all. And uh so that would explain why,
Speaker 1: you know, the stairway went up so quickly. Well that, yeah,
Speaker 1: and that was the official Atlanta Fire Department's position that
Speaker 1: somebody had carelessly tossed a cigarette somewhere around the fourth
Speaker 1: floor stairwell and it had gone up. Which I mean,
Speaker 1: if that's all it takes for your hotel to go up,
Speaker 1: that's pretty bad too, you know. Yeah, and the wine
Speaker 1: coff I believe that that was the one where it
Speaker 1: had the stairwell going up around the elevator shaft, right, Yes,
Speaker 1: so we have to talk about this for a second.
Speaker 1: They had a central elevator shaft, which a game connect
Speaker 1: very easily like a chimney um and the one the
Speaker 1: one single way up or down, was in a stair
Speaker 1: case that went around the elevator shaft. So when the
Speaker 1: elevator shaft is filled with hot gases and smoke, so
Speaker 1: too is the staircase, which meant that when the the
Speaker 1: bottom floors starting around the I think the third or
Speaker 1: fourth or fifth floor started to catch fire and smoke
Speaker 1: started pouring out, it went up and everybody above those
Speaker 1: floors was trapped in the hotel up to fifteen floors.
Speaker 1: And when the fire department came out, they realized very quickly,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure they already knew this. The highest that
Speaker 1: they had a ladder, the highest ladder they had could
Speaker 1: go up to eighty five ft. Well that's about eight stories.
Speaker 1: This is a fifteen story building, So the people in
Speaker 1: the higher stories were really in trouble. Yeah, and inside
Speaker 1: this hotel too, there was a lot of poor design
Speaker 1: going on. They were um there were a lot of
Speaker 1: hidden voids, there were false ceilings, There were places where
Speaker 1: the fire could be spreading and no one even knows
Speaker 1: it's spreading. Again, these and lobbies and mezzanines, open stairways,
Speaker 1: the transoms really came into play again with people just
Speaker 1: getting fresh air into their rooms, even though they do
Speaker 1: mention air conditioning in the wine called foot It was
Speaker 1: December Atlanta. Yeah, I'm not sure why either, because I mean,
Speaker 1: I can understand why somebody would open the window to
Speaker 1: stick their head out. But yeah, since it's cold, their
Speaker 1: the transom should be shut. I don't know. Maybe yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe the room was stuffy or something like that. Well,
Speaker 1: everyone was smoking, so maybe they just wanted to let
Speaker 1: out some of their cigarettes smoke, right, or they ran
Speaker 1: out of smoke, so they were letting everybody else's smoke in.
Speaker 1: It's a good point, uh, is it sure? Okay? Should
Speaker 1: we take another break? Yeah? All right, we'll talk about
Speaker 1: how most people perished and what was done about this
Speaker 1: right after this, So the Wine Cough, Uh, I mean,
Speaker 1: in all these hotels, people tried to escape through fire
Speaker 1: escapes and stuff because they had them. The Wine Cough
Speaker 1: did not have fire escapes, like we said. So there
Speaker 1: were a lot of people um tying bed sheets. They
Speaker 1: were trying to jump onto net sell by firefighters. They
Speaker 1: were trying to leap onto adjacent buildings from lower floors. Uh.
Speaker 1: And some people just you know, you you jump because
Speaker 1: you think that's your best bet. Uh. And some of
Speaker 1: those people actually survived, many of them died. One very
Speaker 1: sad story was one person jumped and actually survived because
Speaker 1: they landed on bodies of people that had died below them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really tough, um to get across. What what the scene?
Speaker 1: How chaotic this scene was like there were bodies just
Speaker 1: falling everywhere. The firefighters had nets, but people were jumping
Speaker 1: in totally uncoordinated ways and so very frequently there are
Speaker 1: so many people coming down that they didn't have enough
Speaker 1: nets for them all, so they had to basically pick
Speaker 1: who to try to catch with their net. Um. There
Speaker 1: was a guy named Jimmy Cahill. I believe he was
Speaker 1: from Albany, Georgia, and he was a hero of the
Speaker 1: Wine Cough fire because he escaped and ran next door
Speaker 1: to a building that that shared an alley between it
Speaker 1: and the Wine Cough and found like some painters scaffolding,
Speaker 1: like just like a stout board and put it between
Speaker 1: the building next door that he'd run to and the
Speaker 1: room where his mother was trapped on the sixth floor
Speaker 1: of the Wine Cough and got her out and started
Speaker 1: getting other people out too, and other people, including the
Speaker 1: fire department, started laying ladders down and getting people out
Speaker 1: these this way. So a lot of people escape from
Speaker 1: going from the wine Coughs to the building next door,
Speaker 1: but other people even climbing across this ten foot alley
Speaker 1: to the next building to safety. We're getting knocked off
Speaker 1: of the ladders by people who were jumping from higher buildings.
Speaker 1: Like just total chaos, Smoke everywhere, people screaming. Um, just
Speaker 1: just chaos, man. I can't whenever, my mind kind of
Speaker 1: like imagines what that must have been like it just
Speaker 1: kind of snaps back to the present time as quick
Speaker 1: as possible. It's just tough to to conceive of. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a numbers wise, um man, this is just awful. Forty
Speaker 1: eight people were literally burned alive. Uh, forty people were
Speaker 1: asphyxiated by smoking fumes. Thirty one people died from jumping
Speaker 1: or falling or being knocked off or shoved or whatever.
Speaker 1: And uh, that's the total number of what was it
Speaker 1: a hundred and nineteen total, And then thirty nine of
Speaker 1: those hundred nineteen people were under twenty um and I
Speaker 1: think a lot of them were those kids there for
Speaker 1: the for the Macha delegation or whatever. Yep, the super
Speaker 1: super sad. And you know, the good news is out
Speaker 1: of all of this is it's sad that it took this.
Speaker 1: But after this spate of fires, the government finally was
Speaker 1: like we've got to do something here because people are
Speaker 1: just it seems like left and right dying in hotel fires. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and um, what's sad is there were people who had
Speaker 1: already been writing all of these recommendations of like best practices.
Speaker 1: There's a UM, the Life Safety Code from the National
Speaker 1: Fire Protection Association had basically been saying like, here's here's
Speaker 1: what you gotta do. It's not like we didn't know
Speaker 1: how to prevent losses of life and hotel fires. It's
Speaker 1: just that people weren't making hotel operators do these things.
Speaker 1: And so these fire policies stayed local, right, So those
Speaker 1: it's still to this day a patchwork of regulations in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways. But there they these little towns
Speaker 1: and cities were so affected by these fires in that
Speaker 1: they started adopting these policies, including things like you got
Speaker 1: a hotel, you've gotta have a fire sprinkler system. That
Speaker 1: was one fire alarm system, I mean really low hanging fruit,
Speaker 1: but that a lot of hotels just didn't have at
Speaker 1: the time. Suddenly they were forced to. Yeah, fire doors
Speaker 1: um were required then pretty much everywhere. They were required
Speaker 1: to be closed at all times. Uh, those transoms, those
Speaker 1: troublesome transoms that admittedly I think are great and love. Um,
Speaker 1: they were basically prohibited from that point on, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: fresh air, air conditioning or now they said no more transoms. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then fire escapes, of course, were mandated pretty much everywhere. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And if you if you look around, like if you're
Speaker 1: into an office building or something, you ever go down
Speaker 1: the stairwell, like it's totally unadorned. It's concrete and metal
Speaker 1: and it's painted. There's nothing, there's no are there's no carpet,
Speaker 1: there's no fake plants, there's nothing there. And the reason
Speaker 1: why is because that stairwell is meant to prevent fire
Speaker 1: from getting any further. There's there's nothing to burn. And
Speaker 1: a lot of that is because of these ninety six
Speaker 1: fires and the changes in the code. It changed like
Speaker 1: a fire door, it's a self closing door, it's a
Speaker 1: heavy door. It's meant to be that way, and it
Speaker 1: says like doors to remain closed at all times. Um.
Speaker 1: All of that came out of this, and there used
Speaker 1: to be a big debate over whether existing hotels would
Speaker 1: be grandfathered in anytime the code was updated. And that
Speaker 1: was the custom of the land and again these nineteen
Speaker 1: forties six hotel fires changed that. It was if you
Speaker 1: have a hotel and you're doing business, you have to
Speaker 1: retroactively add a fire sprinkler system. Now. Yeah, and Truman,
Speaker 1: President Truman the following year got involved, uh and specifically
Speaker 1: called for a national conference on fire pre engine So
Speaker 1: while you know, I don't think there were any federal regulations,
Speaker 1: like you said, it was still local. Uh. They did. Um,
Speaker 1: they did change a lot of the like national and
Speaker 1: federal building codes at least, yes, And I think it
Speaker 1: is still that way to this day. It's localities that
Speaker 1: are responsible for fire codes, right. Yeah. And I think
Speaker 1: there's been ever since then an I on design and safety,
Speaker 1: whereas back then it was just like let's make this
Speaker 1: the most beautiful uh thing. I mean, I think in
Speaker 1: that first Chicago fire, didn't they even test the paneling
Speaker 1: and found that the oak paneling that they used was
Speaker 1: like five times more flammable than just regular oak paneling
Speaker 1: because they you know, it was coated with this special
Speaker 1: thing to make it look pretty, right, this like the veneer.
Speaker 1: I think they used it really really flammable. Absolutely. Um.
Speaker 1: There was that that MGM fire in nineteen eighty. That
Speaker 1: was so bad. It came decades after these reforms were made.
Speaker 1: That was that Vegas. Yeah, it was a big deal.
Speaker 1: Like there, it was on TV while it was happening. Um,
Speaker 1: there's footage of like people in the higher um floors,
Speaker 1: like like hanging out of their window and stuff. Um.
Speaker 1: And there are a lot of people in the hotel
Speaker 1: at this time. People died. I think seven of those
Speaker 1: were hotel employees. Um. But it could have been way,
Speaker 1: way worse. But the reason it was as bad as
Speaker 1: it was again, A hundred and nineteen is the worst
Speaker 1: hotel fired American history. This was eight five, so it
Speaker 1: was pretty close to as bad as it gets. But
Speaker 1: the reason why it was as bad as it was
Speaker 1: just because the people who built the MGM grand like
Speaker 1: balked at the cost of adding a sprinkler system when
Speaker 1: they built it, and the people in Vegas who were
Speaker 1: overseeing the fire code and enforcing it gave him a
Speaker 1: pass because they were just glad that the MGM Graham
Speaker 1: was building there and the think the fire sprinkler system
Speaker 1: would have cost less than two hundred thousand dollars to
Speaker 1: build in and they just didn't do it until after Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: That's yeah, that's what I mean. Like, that's nineteen thirties stuff,
Speaker 1: not nineteen eighties stuff. Look right above this, buddy, You
Speaker 1: see that little fire sprinkler. Yeah, I know. Now it's
Speaker 1: like cool to show your fire sprinklers, you know, and
Speaker 1: the piping and all that. Forget your drop ceilings. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's all about open floor plants, which, by the way, Chuck,
Speaker 1: I'm seeing more and more like of the the steady
Speaker 1: drumbeat against open floor plans is like the worst idea
Speaker 1: anyone's ever had as far as office spaces go. Yeah,
Speaker 1: how they're just attention killer. It's not like I mean
Speaker 1: you know that, like how often do I pester you
Speaker 1: and bother you just because I can like lean back
Speaker 1: and be like hey right. But they're so distracting, and
Speaker 1: I predict they're going to be gone in the next
Speaker 1: couple of years. Yeah, I don't know, man, remember like
Speaker 1: back to the high key tubes or offices. I think
Speaker 1: it's I don't know, I have no prediction. Actually, I
Speaker 1: was gonna say, I think it's just gonna be more
Speaker 1: working from home, and probably it will, but I don't
Speaker 1: think we're done with offices yet. So I don't know
Speaker 1: what's coming next. I went in an office building, uh
Speaker 1: last week that had those really tall cubes that we
Speaker 1: used to be in back in the day, and it
Speaker 1: was weird. It was like, Man, I remember, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I didn't like it. There was something about someone poking
Speaker 1: their head above the wall gophering. Yeah it was. It
Speaker 1: was called I think so yeah, I don't know. I
Speaker 1: never liked that. I prefer to see my enemies coming,
Speaker 1: So I think I like the open thing. Yeah, you did.
Speaker 1: Used to be a lot more jumpy with those high
Speaker 1: cuber man. I hated him. Uh you got anything else? Yeah?
Speaker 1: One more thing? Um, there's a very famous photograph from
Speaker 1: the wine Cofugh fire. U That one a young Georgia
Speaker 1: Tech student of Pulitzer Prize in ninety seven. He was
Speaker 1: a PhD student named Arnold Hardy and uh he was
Speaker 1: he lived kind of close by. He was on his
Speaker 1: way back from dancing, heard about this fire, called and
Speaker 1: found out where it is. Because he fancied himself of
Speaker 1: a you know, kind of amateur photographer, grabbed his camera,
Speaker 1: took a cab over there and was the first photographer
Speaker 1: on the scene and took a very famous photo of
Speaker 1: a forty one year old secretary named Daisy mccomber in
Speaker 1: mid fall from this building. Um, you know her, her
Speaker 1: dress is blown up in her you know, nineteen forties
Speaker 1: pantaloons are are showing and it's really a creepy picture. Um.
Speaker 1: He ended up selling the rights to the a P
Speaker 1: for three hundred bucks. They tried to hire him as
Speaker 1: a photographer, you know, their Atlanta guy, and he refused
Speaker 1: and um apparently too and this is not well known,
Speaker 1: there was a drug store across the street named Lanes
Speaker 1: that was closed and they needed supplies like emergency medical supplies,
Speaker 1: and people were waiting on the owner to show up
Speaker 1: and open it, and Hardy himself kicked in the door. Uh.
Speaker 1: Ended up getting arrested for disorderly conduct, but the drug
Speaker 1: store dropped the charges, even though they made him pay
Speaker 1: for the door, which he paid for with his photo proceeds,
Speaker 1: I guess. But as apparently they like, at least in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: local police were then required to have medical supplies in
Speaker 1: their cars for the first time, and he always felt bad. Um.
Speaker 1: I don't know if this is still true, but as
Speaker 1: of a couple of years ago, his granddaughter was worked
Speaker 1: at Twains indicator, and she kind of kept his memory alive.
Speaker 1: He died in two thousand seven and said that he
Speaker 1: was always kind of conflicted that he got this recognition
Speaker 1: and this Pulitzer prize from such a tragedy. So did
Speaker 1: did Daisy die? She lived, although it was hard to
Speaker 1: find her because apparently I don't know if it was
Speaker 1: because it was you know, her underwear was showing, but
Speaker 1: and it was the nineties. She never came out and
Speaker 1: was like, that's me. She would deny that it was her,
Speaker 1: but they eventually found that it was Daisy mccomber and
Speaker 1: she did live. Huh, well, that's good and she lived
Speaker 1: at least very interesting. I've got one more thing. So
Speaker 1: with the wine Cough Hotel fire, Um, when they showed up,
Speaker 1: it was a one alarmed fire when they called, and
Speaker 1: I was like, what is that? What does that mean?
Speaker 1: And a one alarm fire to alarm fire or whatever.
Speaker 1: So apparently the alarm is the number of firefighters and
Speaker 1: equipment that are brought out. It's the number of units,
Speaker 1: right yeah, or the number of people. And it varies
Speaker 1: by municipality. So for example, in like I found in Louisville, Kentucky,
Speaker 1: a one alarmed fire is twenty firefighters, five trucks, and
Speaker 1: two commanders, and then with each alarm that number doubles. Right,
Speaker 1: So when the Atlanta Fire Department showed up on the scene,
Speaker 1: it was a one alarmed fire, and it like right
Speaker 1: when they got there, the chief turned it into a
Speaker 1: two and then three alarmed fire, and then within another
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes they turned in a four alarm fire. And
Speaker 1: by with I think an hour or so after this
Speaker 1: fire had started, they were calling firefighters, um who are
Speaker 1: off duty from other cities. Basically anyone who could get
Speaker 1: there fast enough and their fire truck came out to
Speaker 1: this to fight this fire. Wow, it was a big one.
Speaker 1: Uh okay, And that's it. That's all I've got for
Speaker 1: hotel fires. I got nothing else. Well, if you want
Speaker 1: to know more about hotel fires, you can search those
Speaker 1: terms on the internet, because I don't think How Stuff
Speaker 1: Works has anything about it. But that's okay because I
Speaker 1: said search bar, which means it's time for a listener mail.
Speaker 1: Uh this is I'm gonna call this um good job.
Speaker 1: That's my monica. Sellis okay. I was listening to how
Speaker 1: board breaking works, guys, and you got into conversation on
Speaker 1: women's tennis and the shrieking and the yelling and wondering
Speaker 1: about stephie Graff or Monica Sellis. You also mentioned Monica
Speaker 1: sells Is stabbed. This is where my useless knowledge comes in. Guys,
Speaker 1: most women tennis players do shriek, and I would personally
Speaker 1: this chuck speaking, I think most men do too, right,
Speaker 1: m hmm, I hear a lot of grunting, sure, but
Speaker 1: he says, Monica Sellis was the one that really had
Speaker 1: a very loud and high shriek, so loud in fact,
Speaker 1: that many of her opponents would complain during the match
Speaker 1: and she would actually get warnings from the chair umpire. Uh.
Speaker 1: They would even measure how loud her shriek was. I
Speaker 1: didn't know that. Yeah, that seems weird. Another interesting thing
Speaker 1: to me is that when Monica Sellis was stabbed in
Speaker 1: the back, she was courtside uh, on the courtside change,
Speaker 1: resting in her chair. The person who stabbed her was
Speaker 1: not a fan. He was a Steffi Graph fan who
Speaker 1: was worried that Sellis would beat her record. Oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: I know you believe that. Did you see the movie
Speaker 1: about um oh who who? Was it Nancy carry Tanya Harding?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, basically I didn't realize that that
Speaker 1: had happened in tennis as well. Did you see that movie? Yeah?
Speaker 1: It was good. Huh, it was, it was, It was
Speaker 1: very good. I was I was surprised that she human
Speaker 1: is Tanya Harding? So well, you know that was local,
Speaker 1: locally made. No, that was obviously made in Oregon. No,
Speaker 1: like the Golden Buddha Chinese restaurant indicators there. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought. I was like, is that it's the Golden
Speaker 1: Buddha chain because I think I've eaten at that one.
Speaker 1: And yeah, okay, you're right. I did notice that, and
Speaker 1: we had quite a few of the old stuff. You
Speaker 1: should know. Crew members worked on it. Awesome. Yeah, that's cool.
Speaker 1: So anyway back to the email, Monica Sellis was very young,
Speaker 1: just starting her career off, and Steffi had already been
Speaker 1: playing for a while. Monica had been on a terror
Speaker 1: and was starting to beat stephie Graff. Because of the
Speaker 1: stabbing incident, the Professional Tennis Tour increased security protocol. If
Speaker 1: you watch tennis on TV today, you will see that
Speaker 1: there are always security on the court during the changeovers.
Speaker 1: The security guard actually will stand behind the tennis player
Speaker 1: facing the crowd. And that is from Rawle Rodriguez and Topeka, Kansas.
Speaker 1: Nice thank you or Raoul r A U L. Rodriguez,
Speaker 1: Thank you from Topeka Huh, Topeka, Kansas holding it down well,
Speaker 1: thanks a lot, Raoul and everybody out there in Topeka,
Speaker 1: Kansas for listening to us, and uh, wherever you are,
Speaker 1: you can hang out with us on the social media's
Speaker 1: at And by the way, I'm well aware that media
Speaker 1: is media's is not the plural of medium. You know
Speaker 1: that media is plural itself. I'm just kidding, so lighten up.
Speaker 1: Someone said that and I was like, what's a joke, sir. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So if you want to hang out with us on
Speaker 1: social media's you know, I'm just saying it out of spite. Um,
Speaker 1: you can go to stuffy sho dot com find all
Speaker 1: that stuff there. You can send us an email to
Speaker 1: Stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com for more
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how
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