WEBVTT - The Cocoanut Grove Fire 0:00:01.280 --> 0:00:04.320 Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:13.800 of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. 0:00:13.840 --> 0:00:17.560 I'm Tracy Vie Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. We've gotten 0:00:17.600 --> 0:00:20.239 a lot of requests over the years to do an 0:00:20.239 --> 0:00:23.919 episode about the Coconut Grove nightclub fire, and I have 0:00:24.200 --> 0:00:28.720 really really put off doing it because of all the 0:00:28.800 --> 0:00:33.600 different types of disasters there are to research. For me, 0:00:33.800 --> 0:00:38.880 the fires are the worst ones there. They're bad. Yeah, 0:00:38.920 --> 0:00:42.559 they're bad. We can talk about reasons why on Friday 0:00:42.560 --> 0:00:46.280 and the behind the scenes. But the Coconut Grove fire 0:00:46.720 --> 0:00:49.560 came up not long ago on our episode on Charles 0:00:49.560 --> 0:00:53.920 Ponzi because his wife Rose worked there. She went to 0:00:53.920 --> 0:00:56.200 work there after he had been deported back to Italy, 0:00:56.280 --> 0:00:59.360 but she was not at work that night, so I 0:00:59.400 --> 0:01:03.200 thought about moving it onto the list. Then after it 0:01:03.240 --> 0:01:04.760 had come up, and as I was looking at it, 0:01:04.800 --> 0:01:08.920 I realized this year is the fires eightieth anniversary. It 0:01:09.000 --> 0:01:16.040 happened on November. This is still the deadliest nightclub fire 0:01:16.120 --> 0:01:19.920 in history, and in terms of single building fires, it 0:01:20.040 --> 0:01:24.240 is the second deadliest in United States history. The deadliest 0:01:24.319 --> 0:01:27.800 was the Iroquois Theater fire in Chicago that happened on 0:01:27.840 --> 0:01:32.040 December nineteen oh three, and we covered that fire on 0:01:32.200 --> 0:01:38.000 this show on December eight. As we will discuss, though, 0:01:38.920 --> 0:01:41.960 there are a lot of lessons from the Iroquois Theater 0:01:42.080 --> 0:01:46.600 fire that had not been heated at Coconut Grove almost 0:01:46.680 --> 0:01:51.200 forty years later. Coconut Grove, often known just as the Grove, 0:01:51.520 --> 0:01:55.320 was at seventeen Piedmont Street in Boston, Massachusetts, with an 0:01:55.480 --> 0:01:59.280 entrance set behind a trio of archways. It's theme may 0:01:59.280 --> 0:02:02.000 have been inspired by the Coconut Grove nightclub at the 0:02:02.040 --> 0:02:07.040 Ambassador Hotel on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. Boston's Coconut 0:02:07.040 --> 0:02:10.720 Grove had opened in in what had previously been a 0:02:10.760 --> 0:02:14.600 garage and warehouse. Over time, it had been built on 0:02:14.880 --> 0:02:19.800 and expanded and remodeled and by The club had this 0:02:19.960 --> 0:02:24.840 kind of odd, almost zigzag shape. The ground floor contained 0:02:24.919 --> 0:02:28.120 the caricature bar as well as a full service restaurant. 0:02:28.400 --> 0:02:31.400 The restaurant had a central dance floor with tables and 0:02:31.480 --> 0:02:34.200 chairs on three sides of it and an orchestra stage 0:02:34.240 --> 0:02:38.080 on the fourth. This area had a retractable roof that 0:02:38.120 --> 0:02:40.560 could be opened in good weather, which I think sounds 0:02:40.960 --> 0:02:44.600 very nice. This was November, though, so it was closed 0:02:44.600 --> 0:02:47.519 the night of the fire. The ground floor also had 0:02:47.600 --> 0:02:51.680 a newly opened lounge called the Broadway Lounge also just 0:02:51.760 --> 0:02:54.520 called the New Lounge, that also had a bar in it. 0:02:55.160 --> 0:02:59.040 There were also coat check rooms, restrooms, dressing rooms for 0:02:59.080 --> 0:03:02.440 the entertainer, is, a telephone room, and a service bar. 0:03:03.000 --> 0:03:04.880 So there was a lot of stuff packed into this 0:03:05.000 --> 0:03:10.200 relatively small kind of zigzag shaped space. The basement of 0:03:10.240 --> 0:03:13.760 the grove had only one public space, the Melody Lounge. 0:03:14.440 --> 0:03:17.399 The rest of the basement house the furnace room, the kitchens, 0:03:17.400 --> 0:03:22.120 with walking, cold storage and other storage spaces on both floors. 0:03:22.160 --> 0:03:26.600 The club was decorated with lighted artificial palm trees, satiny 0:03:26.720 --> 0:03:29.880 fabric draped from the ceiling and walls of stairs, and 0:03:29.919 --> 0:03:33.000 the Melody Lounge had a satin covered ceiling and walls 0:03:33.040 --> 0:03:38.080 covered in ratan bamboo and synthetic leather. Previously, the grove 0:03:38.120 --> 0:03:41.560 had been owned by mob boss Charles Solomon, who was 0:03:41.640 --> 0:03:46.080 known as King. Solomon was murdered at Boston's Cotton Club 0:03:46.120 --> 0:03:49.480 in ninety three, and at that point his wife inherited 0:03:49.520 --> 0:03:53.520 the grove. She gave it to their lawyer, Barnett Wolansky, 0:03:53.640 --> 0:03:58.520 known as Barney in lieu of legal fees. When Solomon 0:03:58.600 --> 0:04:02.360 owned it, the grove had kind of a seedy reputation 0:04:02.560 --> 0:04:06.280 as a prohibition earirest speak easy but well Landski tried 0:04:06.320 --> 0:04:09.120 to transform it into a more glamorous place that people 0:04:09.160 --> 0:04:12.560 would want to come for dinner, drinks, dancing, and entertainment. 0:04:13.080 --> 0:04:17.960 On the night of November, the grove was busy. It 0:04:18.000 --> 0:04:21.039 was the Saturday after Thanksgiving. There had been a big 0:04:21.080 --> 0:04:24.359 college football game earlier in the day between rivals Boston 0:04:24.480 --> 0:04:28.479 College and Holy Cross College. Boston College was at the 0:04:28.600 --> 0:04:32.039 end of an undefeated season and everyone expected them to 0:04:32.120 --> 0:04:35.000 win and then be invited to play in the Sugar Bowl. 0:04:35.560 --> 0:04:38.600 There was reportedly even a committee on hand to deliver 0:04:38.720 --> 0:04:43.880 that invitation after the game, but surprise, Boston College lost 0:04:44.000 --> 0:04:48.520 fifty five to twelve. That was an enormous upset. A 0:04:48.600 --> 0:04:51.400 formal celebration had been planned at the grove, which was 0:04:51.440 --> 0:04:54.119 canceled because of that loss, but a lot of people 0:04:54.200 --> 0:04:58.040 made their way there after the game anyway. A party 0:04:58.040 --> 0:05:01.119 that went on as planned that night was in honor 0:05:01.160 --> 0:05:04.240 of actor Buck Jones. Jones was known for his work 0:05:04.240 --> 0:05:06.880 in westerns. He had acting credits and more than a 0:05:07.000 --> 0:05:11.919 hundred and fifty films, almost all of them Westerns. He 0:05:12.000 --> 0:05:14.840 was on a tour promoting war bonds, and about thirty 0:05:14.920 --> 0:05:17.000 people were at his party. A lot of them were 0:05:17.040 --> 0:05:21.479 affiliated with Monogram Theater Group. Since this happened as the 0:05:21.560 --> 0:05:24.160 United States was involved in World War Two, there were 0:05:24.160 --> 0:05:27.880 also a lot of servicemen there. At about ten fifteen 0:05:27.960 --> 0:05:32.359 that night, the grove was absolutely packed. The club's license 0:05:32.480 --> 0:05:35.800 applications with the City of Boston specified that it had 0:05:35.839 --> 0:05:40.760 four hundred chairs and thirty stools, although sources contradict about 0:05:40.760 --> 0:05:44.440 what the club's maximum occupancy was. There are sources that 0:05:44.520 --> 0:05:49.800 list both four hundred sixty and six hundred people. Regardless, 0:05:50.200 --> 0:05:52.960 it's estimated that there were about a thousand people in 0:05:53.000 --> 0:05:58.480 the building that night, so roughly twice the planned number. Downstairs, 0:05:58.640 --> 0:06:01.960 in a corner of the mill the lounge, someone loosened 0:06:02.040 --> 0:06:04.680 a light bulb in one of the artificial palm trees. 0:06:05.040 --> 0:06:08.120 That corner was already pretty dimly lit, but this person 0:06:08.240 --> 0:06:12.719 apparently wanted some more privacy with his date. The bartender 0:06:12.960 --> 0:06:15.839 noticed this and told a bus boy to go fix 0:06:15.920 --> 0:06:18.839 the bulb. Without that bulblet, it was too dark in 0:06:18.880 --> 0:06:22.000 the corner to see, so the bus boy lit a match, 0:06:22.200 --> 0:06:25.000 and then once he was done, he extinguished the match, 0:06:25.279 --> 0:06:28.120 stomping it out on the floor with his foot. Very 0:06:28.240 --> 0:06:31.880 soon after this, people noticed sparks in the vicinity of 0:06:31.920 --> 0:06:35.479 this palm tree near the ceiling, but for a moment 0:06:35.520 --> 0:06:39.480 there was not an obvious flame. But then the fire 0:06:39.560 --> 0:06:43.640 spread very rapidly along the underside of the fabric draped 0:06:43.680 --> 0:06:47.159 below the ceiling. It took somewhere between two and four 0:06:47.200 --> 0:06:51.120 minutes for a very hot, fast moving fire to engulf 0:06:51.200 --> 0:06:55.479 the melody lounge. The stairway out of the lounge, which 0:06:55.520 --> 0:06:58.720 was narrow and steep, acted like a chimney, drawing the 0:06:58.800 --> 0:07:00.919 fire and the heat up to the ground floor of 0:07:00.960 --> 0:07:04.320 the building, where it burst into the foyer. The foyer 0:07:04.480 --> 0:07:07.960 had a high, arched ceiling, and it similarly acted like 0:07:08.000 --> 0:07:10.440 a chimney and pulled the fire into the rest of 0:07:10.480 --> 0:07:14.880 the ground floor. The fabric draped walls and ceiling quickly 0:07:14.920 --> 0:07:18.960 caught fire. Within about five minutes, the fire had moved 0:07:19.120 --> 0:07:22.560 through the ground floor restaurant and into the New Broadway lounge. 0:07:23.200 --> 0:07:27.120 When people noticed the flames, they panicked, and that panic 0:07:27.200 --> 0:07:29.880 became much worse when the lights went out Just minutes 0:07:29.960 --> 0:07:33.880 after the fire started, there were no emergency lights, and 0:07:33.920 --> 0:07:37.280 the exits were not marked. Even if they had been. 0:07:37.640 --> 0:07:42.000 Many of the doors were locked. People overturned tables and 0:07:42.120 --> 0:07:44.600 punched and shoved one another as they fought to get 0:07:44.600 --> 0:07:47.840 to an exit. And the exit the vast majority of 0:07:47.880 --> 0:07:50.760 people were pushing for was the revolving door that they 0:07:50.920 --> 0:07:55.040 used to enter the building that was quickly jammed with bodies. 0:07:56.200 --> 0:07:59.440 As the fire burned through the oxygen and the melody lounge, 0:07:59.560 --> 0:08:03.360 it left very hot, flammable gases that burst into flame 0:08:03.400 --> 0:08:05.400 again when they got to the top of the stairs, 0:08:05.440 --> 0:08:08.640 where there was more fresh air, and that meant people 0:08:08.680 --> 0:08:11.320 who didn't make it up the stairs ahead of the 0:08:11.440 --> 0:08:15.720 fire found those stairs blocked by flames. The same was 0:08:15.760 --> 0:08:19.280 true for the buildings working doors to the outside. The 0:08:19.360 --> 0:08:22.480 fire surged as it came into contact with the fresh air. 0:08:23.040 --> 0:08:26.240 This included surging around the sides of the revolving door, 0:08:27.240 --> 0:08:31.320 so the doors that were not locked became totally impassable. 0:08:31.360 --> 0:08:34.760 They were blocked by bursts of flame and by bodies 0:08:34.920 --> 0:08:38.720 stacked on top of one another. Together, all of this 0:08:38.920 --> 0:08:44.679 was disastrous. Four hundred two people died. Official lists include 0:08:44.679 --> 0:08:48.800 four nine names. One person who died in the hospital 0:08:48.960 --> 0:08:52.960 is not included for reasons that are unclear. Another person 0:08:53.040 --> 0:08:56.000 survived the fire but lost his wife, and he took 0:08:56.040 --> 0:08:59.120 his own life at the hospital. There were also one 0:08:59.200 --> 0:09:02.760 hundred sixties x reported injuries, but those are only the 0:09:02.800 --> 0:09:06.080 people who were taken to the hospital. With an estimated 0:09:06.120 --> 0:09:08.640 one thousand people in the building that night, that means 0:09:09.040 --> 0:09:11.960 about half of the people who were there died. Only 0:09:12.040 --> 0:09:14.680 one in four made it out without an injury bad 0:09:14.800 --> 0:09:17.880 enough to send them to the hospital. Most of the 0:09:17.960 --> 0:09:22.240 deaths were from burns, smoke annilation, or carbon monoxide poisoning, 0:09:22.679 --> 0:09:25.720 but there were also deaths from crushing injuries or other 0:09:25.760 --> 0:09:29.320 injuries sustained while trying to escape. We're going to take 0:09:29.360 --> 0:09:31.920 a quick sponsor break, and then we'll talk about efforts 0:09:31.960 --> 0:09:44.000 to put out the fire and the rescue efforts. The 0:09:44.040 --> 0:09:47.880 Coconut Grove fire happened at a moment when Boston's fire 0:09:47.920 --> 0:09:53.320 department and other emergency services were simultaneously reeling and also 0:09:53.679 --> 0:09:59.000 well prepared for such an emergency. On November, less than 0:09:59.080 --> 0:10:03.319 two weeks before the Coconut Grove fire, six firefighters had 0:10:03.360 --> 0:10:08.000 been killed and about fifty others trapped or injured. After 0:10:08.080 --> 0:10:12.440 a wall collapsed. The restaurant fire they had been fighting 0:10:12.520 --> 0:10:16.000 had been brought under control, and the wall collapsed after 0:10:16.040 --> 0:10:21.000 that part was basically finished. Then, the weekend before the 0:10:21.040 --> 0:10:25.400 Coconut Grove fire, Boston had also conducted a civil defense drill. 0:10:26.320 --> 0:10:29.439 This was a drill that simulated a blitzkrieg like attack 0:10:29.520 --> 0:10:33.360 on the city with mass casualties. So while the fire 0:10:33.400 --> 0:10:35.880 department and other people who had responded to that fire 0:10:35.960 --> 0:10:40.360 were still really recovering from this earlier disaster, thousands of 0:10:40.400 --> 0:10:45.480 people had also just practiced exactly what to do. Because 0:10:45.559 --> 0:10:48.640 Boston is a major city on the US eastern Seaboard, 0:10:49.040 --> 0:10:52.680 officials had been preparing for the possibility of an enemy attack. 0:10:53.440 --> 0:10:56.600 In addition to the civil defense drill, area hospitals had 0:10:56.600 --> 0:11:01.520 started establishing blood banks and stockpiling blood and plasma. Blood 0:11:01.559 --> 0:11:04.400 banks were really a brand new innovation at this point. 0:11:04.559 --> 0:11:06.800 That's something else that has been on Tracy's list for 0:11:06.840 --> 0:11:09.640 a bit, so expect an episode on that fairly soon 0:11:09.679 --> 0:11:13.080 as well. I am working on it right now. In fact, 0:11:13.920 --> 0:11:16.840 at about ten fift PM on the night of the fire, 0:11:16.880 --> 0:11:19.600 just as it was getting started in the Melody Lounge, 0:11:19.840 --> 0:11:23.000 the Boston Fire Department responded to a signal from a 0:11:23.040 --> 0:11:26.760 fire alarm box at the corner of Stewart and Carver Streets. 0:11:27.440 --> 0:11:30.920 Carver Street is Charles Street today. M turned out to 0:11:30.920 --> 0:11:35.160 be a vehicle fire, which they extinguished, but then firefighters 0:11:35.240 --> 0:11:38.880 heard a commotion and noticed smoke coming from the direction 0:11:38.960 --> 0:11:42.600 of coconut growth, which was not far away. As the 0:11:42.640 --> 0:11:46.800 firefighters moved to investigate, they also ran into bystanders who 0:11:46.800 --> 0:11:50.560 were calling for help. So, by total coincidence, the Boston 0:11:50.600 --> 0:11:53.880 Fire Department was already there on the scene working to 0:11:53.920 --> 0:11:57.040 bring the fire under control. Within minutes of its starting, 0:11:57.920 --> 0:12:02.200 another bystander pulled the alarm at another fire department call box, 0:12:02.559 --> 0:12:05.440 and at ten twenty three, roughly eight minutes after the 0:12:05.480 --> 0:12:08.440 fire started, the fire chief on the scene ordered a 0:12:08.520 --> 0:12:12.360 third alarm to be called. A fourth alarm followed almost 0:12:12.400 --> 0:12:17.040 immediately at eleven o two. This became a five alarm fire. 0:12:17.920 --> 0:12:22.480 Over that period, twenty five engine companies, five ladder companies, 0:12:22.559 --> 0:12:26.160 a water tower, and a rescue company had all arrived, 0:12:26.440 --> 0:12:30.920 along with other emergency responders. Other people soon on the 0:12:30.960 --> 0:12:35.360 scene included Boston Mayor Maurice J. Tobin, the Fire Commissioner, 0:12:35.480 --> 0:12:40.000 the Building Commissioner, the Police Commissioner and the Superintendent of Police, 0:12:40.640 --> 0:12:44.760 the State Fire Marshal, Boston's acting Commissioner of Public Safety, 0:12:44.840 --> 0:12:47.720 and the director of the Boston Committee on Public Safety 0:12:47.720 --> 0:12:51.640 were all there as well. Civilian defense units arrived, as 0:12:51.679 --> 0:12:54.640 well as people from the Red Cross and the Salvation Army. 0:12:55.240 --> 0:12:58.080 The military was involved in the response as well. A 0:12:58.160 --> 0:13:02.160 call went out to Boston Navy Yard at about ten pm, 0:13:02.200 --> 0:13:05.360 and members of the Navy Army, Coast Guard, National Guard, 0:13:05.520 --> 0:13:09.280 and the Naval Hospital in Chelsea, Massachusetts were all involved 0:13:09.280 --> 0:13:12.440 in the response. And of course there were also many 0:13:12.520 --> 0:13:15.080 civilians who came and tried to help, and we're not 0:13:15.160 --> 0:13:20.240 affiliated with any specific group. By coincidence, the club's owner, 0:13:20.320 --> 0:13:24.400 Barney Wolanski, was not present. He was at Massachusetts General 0:13:24.440 --> 0:13:29.800 Hospital recovering from a heart attack he had experienced days before. Tragically, 0:13:30.160 --> 0:13:33.080 it really did not matter how quickly the fire department 0:13:33.200 --> 0:13:36.360 or any of these other responders got there. The fire 0:13:36.520 --> 0:13:39.199 had just been much faster and people were already dead 0:13:39.240 --> 0:13:42.720 and dying. In the words of Fire Commissioner William Arthur 0:13:42.840 --> 0:13:46.240 Riley's official report quote, within two to five minutes of 0:13:46.280 --> 0:13:49.559 the first appearance of the fire, most of the possible exits, 0:13:49.840 --> 0:13:53.640 including all exits normally open to the public, were useless. 0:13:54.320 --> 0:13:57.360 Pouring of fire through such exits made it impossible for 0:13:57.440 --> 0:14:02.240 humans to pass simultaneously through these exits safely. In the 0:14:02.280 --> 0:14:05.840 course of such pouring, the mass of burning gaseous material 0:14:06.160 --> 0:14:09.160 appears to have been depressed from its high elevation within 0:14:09.240 --> 0:14:13.120 the premises in order to pass through the exits. The 0:14:13.160 --> 0:14:16.200 finding of bodies piled up at many of the exits 0:14:16.280 --> 0:14:20.240 is attributable to this fact. These persons, in attempting to 0:14:20.280 --> 0:14:23.360 pass through the exits, were overcome by the great heat 0:14:23.400 --> 0:14:26.960 of the gaseous material pouring through them. At the same time, 0:14:27.800 --> 0:14:30.240 to the same cause must be set down the bodies 0:14:30.280 --> 0:14:32.760 found in the passageway in the corridor at the head 0:14:32.800 --> 0:14:36.920 of the stairway leading from the melody Lounge. In pouring 0:14:36.960 --> 0:14:40.320 through these low seed linked passageways, the mass of gaseous 0:14:40.360 --> 0:14:45.600 material passed so close to such persons as to overcome them. 0:14:45.760 --> 0:14:48.920 Most of the people who survived the fire had managed 0:14:48.960 --> 0:14:52.080 to get out of the building before the flames reached 0:14:52.080 --> 0:14:54.960 the doorways. A few people made it up to the roof. 0:14:55.200 --> 0:14:57.760 Some of them jumped down onto the roofs of parked 0:14:57.760 --> 0:15:01.240 cars below. While others found a adder, although this ladder 0:15:01.360 --> 0:15:04.440 wasn't long enough to reach to the ground from the roof, 0:15:05.040 --> 0:15:06.960 so the people on the roof were trying to hold 0:15:07.000 --> 0:15:09.560 it up for people to climb down as far as 0:15:09.600 --> 0:15:11.640 they could and then dropped to the ground from the 0:15:11.680 --> 0:15:15.680 bottom of it. Once firefighters spotted people on the roof, 0:15:15.720 --> 0:15:18.640 they moved in to help bring them down. A few 0:15:18.680 --> 0:15:21.680 people got out through windows, but most of the windows 0:15:21.680 --> 0:15:24.680 were glass block windows that just could not be opened 0:15:24.800 --> 0:15:29.040 or broken. Coconut Grove employees and entertainers who knew the 0:15:29.120 --> 0:15:31.280 layout of the building made their way out through the 0:15:31.360 --> 0:15:35.080 kitchen or other non public areas, and some customers did 0:15:35.120 --> 0:15:38.640 manage to follow them out. A few people survived by 0:15:38.720 --> 0:15:42.200 hiding in one of the walk in refrigerators. Some in 0:15:42.240 --> 0:15:45.560 the melody lounge survived by simply covering their faces with 0:15:45.600 --> 0:15:48.440 a wet cloth and lying on the floor below the 0:15:48.520 --> 0:15:51.880 flames until the fire was over and rescuers could get 0:15:51.920 --> 0:15:55.560 into the building. Even though the city of Boston had 0:15:55.680 --> 0:15:59.200 just been through a big drill about exactly such an 0:15:59.200 --> 0:16:02.640 occurrence for spawning to a catastrophe of this size was 0:16:02.680 --> 0:16:06.360 still really challenging. Many of the streets around the club 0:16:06.400 --> 0:16:09.800 were small, Some of them were paved with cobblestones, and 0:16:09.840 --> 0:16:15.400 they quickly became jammed with emergency vehicles and people, including bystanders, 0:16:15.640 --> 0:16:18.880 people who needed emergency medical care, and the bodies of 0:16:18.920 --> 0:16:22.760 people who had died. They're also simply were not enough 0:16:22.880 --> 0:16:27.280 ambulances to carry so many people to hospitals. People were 0:16:27.320 --> 0:16:31.920 transported to the hospital in delivery trucks, taxi cabs, basically 0:16:32.040 --> 0:16:35.720 any other vehicle that could be used. Most of the 0:16:35.800 --> 0:16:39.560 victims were taken to one of two hospitals, Boston City 0:16:39.600 --> 0:16:44.960 Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital. Boston City Hospital received three 0:16:45.040 --> 0:16:47.440 hundred victims of the fire over the course of only 0:16:47.480 --> 0:16:51.080 an hour. Rescuers started sending more people to m g 0:16:51.360 --> 0:16:55.240 H when it became clear that Boston City Hospital was overwhelmed, 0:16:55.680 --> 0:16:58.720 and MGH received a hundred and fourteen people over the 0:16:58.720 --> 0:17:02.600 course of about two hours. Much smaller numbers of people 0:17:02.640 --> 0:17:06.360 were sent to hospitals elsewhere in Boston and in neighboring cities, 0:17:06.640 --> 0:17:10.720 including Cambridge and Malden. At many of the hospitals, patients 0:17:10.720 --> 0:17:14.000 started arriving around a shift change that meant that extra 0:17:14.040 --> 0:17:17.280 people were already on hand, but the hospital still needed 0:17:17.280 --> 0:17:21.320 help from other medical personnel all over the area beyond 0:17:21.520 --> 0:17:24.919 the sheer numbers of patients. One of the challenges that 0:17:24.960 --> 0:17:28.440 the hospitals faced was that the ratio of injured and 0:17:28.520 --> 0:17:34.479 dead was very different from most major fires and other disasters. Often, 0:17:34.880 --> 0:17:38.439 far more people are injured than are killed, but in 0:17:38.480 --> 0:17:41.960 the Coconut Grove fire, far more people were killed than 0:17:42.000 --> 0:17:46.399 were injured. The hospitals were receiving so many people who 0:17:46.480 --> 0:17:49.240 were dead by the time they arrived, or who died 0:17:49.600 --> 0:17:53.800 very shortly after arriving, that it created delays in treating 0:17:53.800 --> 0:17:57.240 the people who were still living, whose injuries weren't fatal, 0:17:57.320 --> 0:18:00.120 but who really did need to be treated as quickly 0:18:00.160 --> 0:18:04.000 as possible. Eventually, a temporary morgue was set up in 0:18:04.040 --> 0:18:06.639 a parking deck across the street from the grove to 0:18:06.680 --> 0:18:09.000 try to reduce the number of dead who wound up 0:18:09.000 --> 0:18:12.040 at the hospitals, but in a few cases, people who 0:18:12.080 --> 0:18:14.640 were taken to the temporary morgue turned out to still 0:18:14.680 --> 0:18:18.359 be alive. In many disasters like these, it takes a 0:18:18.359 --> 0:18:21.199 long time to get a final death count, but in 0:18:21.240 --> 0:18:24.000 the case of the Coconut Grove fire, that was established 0:18:24.119 --> 0:18:27.520 very quickly, less than twelve hours after the fire, the 0:18:27.640 --> 0:18:31.520 known death toll had already passed four hundred. What took 0:18:31.520 --> 0:18:35.800 a lot longer was identifying the bodies. Many people had 0:18:35.840 --> 0:18:39.280 died of asphyxiation or smoke in elation, and their clothing 0:18:39.359 --> 0:18:42.560 was mostly intact, so anyone carrying their i d In 0:18:42.640 --> 0:18:46.719 a wallet or in their pockets definitely identified fairly quickly, 0:18:47.400 --> 0:18:49.760 But most people who had carried their i d In 0:18:49.800 --> 0:18:52.159 a purse or in a handbag had lost it in 0:18:52.240 --> 0:18:56.520 the scramble to escape, so in general, many women's bodies 0:18:56.560 --> 0:19:00.960 took much longer to identify, especially before a responders set 0:19:01.040 --> 0:19:04.520 up a centralized information hub. This led to problems at 0:19:04.520 --> 0:19:07.960 the hospitals as people desperately tried to get information about 0:19:07.960 --> 0:19:12.199 missing loved ones who had not yet been identified. The 0:19:12.280 --> 0:19:16.280 people killed as a result of the fire included Buck Jones, 0:19:16.440 --> 0:19:20.280 who died in the hospital two days later. Only one 0:19:20.480 --> 0:19:23.760 of the people who had been at his party escaped uninjured, 0:19:23.800 --> 0:19:27.880 and more than half died. Fifty one servicemen and two 0:19:27.920 --> 0:19:30.800 members of the Women's Army Corps were killed, and another 0:19:30.880 --> 0:19:34.439 twenty seven servicemen were injured. This was so many that 0:19:34.520 --> 0:19:37.520 it raised suspicions that this had been an intentional act 0:19:37.560 --> 0:19:41.359 of wartime sabotage, and that prompted the First Naval District 0:19:41.440 --> 0:19:45.359 to conduct its own investigation into the fire. For a while, 0:19:45.480 --> 0:19:48.119 this fire displaced World War Two on the front page 0:19:48.119 --> 0:19:51.959 of Boston's newspapers and some of the newspapers in the region. 0:19:52.960 --> 0:19:55.600 After another quick sponsor break, we're going to talk about 0:19:55.600 --> 0:20:00.080 investigations into the fire's cause and its aftermath and some 0:20:00.119 --> 0:20:02.119 of the advances that came about in the wake of 0:20:02.119 --> 0:20:13.280 the fire. Like we said at the top of the show, 0:20:13.320 --> 0:20:16.400 we're coming up on the eightieth anniversary of the Coconut 0:20:16.480 --> 0:20:20.199 Grove fire, but we still don't know exactly how it 0:20:20.320 --> 0:20:23.040 started or why it burned the way that it did. 0:20:23.880 --> 0:20:27.359 It was an extremely hot and fast moving, deadly fire, 0:20:27.520 --> 0:20:31.320 while also leaving sections of carpeting and decor and some 0:20:31.400 --> 0:20:36.639 of the furniture essentially untouched. But immediately after the fire, 0:20:36.880 --> 0:20:41.000 news reports in Boston placed the blame on one specific 0:20:41.119 --> 0:20:44.800 person who still often comes up today, and that's the 0:20:44.840 --> 0:20:49.360 bus boy who had let the match. That was Stanley Tomaschowski, 0:20:49.400 --> 0:20:53.719 who was only sixteen. Stanley was an honors student at 0:20:53.800 --> 0:20:57.600 Roxbury Middle School for Boys. His mother was seriously ill 0:20:57.680 --> 0:21:01.040 and he was supplementing his father's in as a janitor 0:21:01.119 --> 0:21:05.199 by working at the grove on busy weekends. While it 0:21:05.359 --> 0:21:07.840 is clear that he did light a match, it is 0:21:07.880 --> 0:21:10.639 not at all clear that that match started the fire. 0:21:11.480 --> 0:21:14.200 This was an arrow when smoking indoors was a lot 0:21:14.240 --> 0:21:19.040 more common, and businesses, including Coconut Grove, routinely handed out 0:21:19.119 --> 0:21:23.320 matchbooks to customers, so this certainly was not the only 0:21:23.359 --> 0:21:27.399 match lit in the lounge that night. Investigations also reveal 0:21:27.640 --> 0:21:31.000 a lot of problems with the building's electrical wiring, and 0:21:31.040 --> 0:21:34.199 its most recent electrical work had not been done by 0:21:34.200 --> 0:21:38.480 a licensed electrician. It's possible that the act of loosening 0:21:38.480 --> 0:21:40.960 and tightening that lightbulb had led to a spark that 0:21:41.040 --> 0:21:44.360 ignited the fire, or that a spark came from one 0:21:44.359 --> 0:21:47.640 of the blower units used to heat the lounge, or 0:21:47.760 --> 0:21:52.959 some other source. Entirely. Boston Fire Commissioner William Arthur Riley 0:21:53.080 --> 0:21:57.159 cleared Stanley of any blame in his official report, writing quote, 0:21:57.240 --> 0:21:59.760 after a careful study of all the evidence, and in 0:21:59.800 --> 0:22:03.080 an analysis of all the facts presented before me, I 0:22:03.160 --> 0:22:06.560 am unable to find the conduct of this boy was 0:22:06.640 --> 0:22:10.240 the cause of the fire. State Fire Marshal Stephen C. 0:22:10.440 --> 0:22:15.280 Garrity came to the same conclusion quoted in is saying quote, 0:22:15.320 --> 0:22:17.800 it is clear to me that he did not ignite 0:22:17.800 --> 0:22:21.479 the palm tree in the Melody Lounge. The official report 0:22:21.560 --> 0:22:24.880 on the fire described it as being of unknown origin, 0:22:25.800 --> 0:22:30.800 but early news reports described Stanley as having unquestionably started 0:22:30.840 --> 0:22:35.000 the fire, even though friends, teachers, and others came to 0:22:35.119 --> 0:22:39.320 his defense, and later news reports walked this back. Stanley 0:22:39.359 --> 0:22:41.560 and his family had to stay in a hotel under 0:22:41.560 --> 0:22:45.159 police protection for months, and he continued to deal with 0:22:45.240 --> 0:22:48.080 things like harassing phone calls and threats about it for 0:22:48.119 --> 0:22:53.240 the rest of his life. He died in Even if 0:22:53.280 --> 0:22:57.680 Stanley's match is what started the fire, he the bartender, 0:22:57.760 --> 0:23:01.560 and other employees had immediately tried to extinguish it, and 0:23:01.600 --> 0:23:05.040 none of them had anything to do with the factors 0:23:05.080 --> 0:23:09.000 that made this fire so deadly. It's still not clear 0:23:09.040 --> 0:23:12.520 at all exactly why it burned so hot and so fast. 0:23:12.840 --> 0:23:15.960 One possibility is that there was a methyl chloride leak 0:23:16.160 --> 0:23:20.640 from the club's air conditioners. Methyl chloride, also called chloro methane, 0:23:20.720 --> 0:23:23.880 is a flammable gas that was used as a refrigerant. 0:23:24.680 --> 0:23:29.280 Another possibility is that the asbestos tiles in the ceilings 0:23:29.320 --> 0:23:33.480 had been held down with a flammable glue. A third 0:23:33.480 --> 0:23:37.000 possibility is that there was just a lot of alcohol 0:23:37.080 --> 0:23:40.840 present and a lot of flammable material had been used 0:23:40.880 --> 0:23:44.080 as part of the furnishings and the decor. The design 0:23:44.080 --> 0:23:46.600 of the building certainly played a role, with parts of 0:23:46.640 --> 0:23:50.920 it essentially acting as chimneys. Vents over stages to allow 0:23:51.000 --> 0:23:53.920 fires to escape upward and out of the building were 0:23:54.000 --> 0:23:56.800 required by law, but they were not in place at 0:23:56.800 --> 0:24:00.520 Coconut Grove. But one of the most critical actors and 0:24:00.560 --> 0:24:04.600 the fires deadliness was the building's exits. The building had 0:24:04.720 --> 0:24:08.040 six exits on the ground floor and three in the basement, 0:24:08.200 --> 0:24:11.440 but out of these nine exits, only three of them 0:24:11.480 --> 0:24:15.320 could be opened by the public. One door was equipped 0:24:15.320 --> 0:24:17.720 with a panic bar that should have opened it to 0:24:17.760 --> 0:24:21.000 the outside if somebody pressed on the bar, but that 0:24:21.080 --> 0:24:24.720 bar had been disabled with a bolt. According to some sources, 0:24:24.800 --> 0:24:28.600 the door was actually bolted shut. Into places like exactly 0:24:28.640 --> 0:24:30.879 how this door was shut. There's a couple of different 0:24:30.920 --> 0:24:35.720 accounts of a door out of the Broadway Lounge opened inwards, 0:24:35.880 --> 0:24:38.480 so while some people were able to get out of 0:24:38.480 --> 0:24:41.280 it at first, once it was shut, people were jammed 0:24:41.359 --> 0:24:43.240 up against it and they couldn't get it open again. 0:24:44.240 --> 0:24:48.000 One door had been bricked completely over. A lot of 0:24:48.000 --> 0:24:52.040 people concluded that Barney Willlanski had locked and covered over 0:24:52.080 --> 0:24:55.600 the doors to keep people from leaving without paying their bill, 0:24:56.119 --> 0:24:59.120 although at least some of this might have gone back 0:24:59.160 --> 0:25:03.400 to the nightclubs earlier time as a speakeasy, and the 0:25:03.440 --> 0:25:06.320 fact that none of the exits were marked meant that 0:25:06.359 --> 0:25:08.800 most people tried to escape by going out the way 0:25:08.840 --> 0:25:11.320