Written for the 60th anniversary of the blaze that changed American fire laws, The School's on Fire! follows the path of the December 1958 fire that killed 92 kids and 3 teachers at Chicago's Our Lady of the Angels School. Recounted in a fast-paced, blow-by-blow, classroom-by-classroom narrative, the tragedy is made accessible by focusing on the survivors' stories of courage, quick thinking, and luck. Author Rebecca C. Jones draws heavily from interviews with those who were there and includes compelling historic photos of the tragedy. The School's on Fire! finishes with a useful "What to Do in Case of Fire" appendix with practical information for kids facing dangerous situations. Additional informative sidebars, resources for further learning, and source notes make this an invaluable addition to any student's bookshelf.
Written for the 60th anniversary of the blaze that changed American fire laws, The School's on Fire! follows the path of the December 1958 fire that killed 92 kids and 3 teachers at Chicago's Our Lady of the Angels School. Recounted in a fast-paced, blow-by-blow, classroom-by-classroom narrative, the tragedy is made accessible by focusing on the survivors' stories of courage, quick thinking, and luck. Author Rebecca C. Jones draws heavily from interviews with those who were there and includes compelling historic photos of the tragedy. The School's on Fire! finishes with a useful "What to Do in Case of Fire" appendix with practical information for kids facing dangerous situations. Additional informative sidebars, resources for further learning, and source notes make this an invaluable addition to any student's bookshelf.
The School's on Fire!: A True Story of Bravery, Tragedy, and Determination
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The School's on Fire!: A True Story of Bravery, Tragedy, and Determination
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Overview
Written for the 60th anniversary of the blaze that changed American fire laws, The School's on Fire! follows the path of the December 1958 fire that killed 92 kids and 3 teachers at Chicago's Our Lady of the Angels School. Recounted in a fast-paced, blow-by-blow, classroom-by-classroom narrative, the tragedy is made accessible by focusing on the survivors' stories of courage, quick thinking, and luck. Author Rebecca C. Jones draws heavily from interviews with those who were there and includes compelling historic photos of the tragedy. The School's on Fire! finishes with a useful "What to Do in Case of Fire" appendix with practical information for kids facing dangerous situations. Additional informative sidebars, resources for further learning, and source notes make this an invaluable addition to any student's bookshelf.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780912777641 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Chicago Review Press, Incorporated |
| Publication date: | 10/02/2018 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 176 |
| Lexile: | 910L (what's this?) |
| File size: | 3 MB |
| Age Range: | 10 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
THE STAIRWELL
* * *
Call the fire department, quick! The school's on fire!
— James Raymond
* * *
The fire began quietly in the northeast corner of the school basement. Someone lit three matches and dropped them into a cardboard trash barrel at the bottom of a wooden stairway that was seldom used. Nobody saw who lit the matches, and nobody noticed the small flame as it smoldered for at least 15 or 20 minutes.
In their classrooms, teachers were finishing up lessons and sending kids on end-of-the-day errands. Two boys from each classroom carried wastebaskets down to the school's boiler room. Several older girls went downstairs to help teachers with younger children. One left for her weekly music lesson in the convent across the street. Thirteen eighth graders were also dismissed early so they could help carry old clothes that had been donated for a fundraiser at the church next door.
But most kids were still in their classrooms, looking forward to the dismissal bell. They had no idea that a small flame in a basement trash barrel was growing into a dangerous fire.
The fire continued to grow in the stairwell until its intense heat shattered a window, bringing in a fresh supply of outside air. As oxygen fed the flames, the fire grew even larger.
School janitor James Raymond was probably the first person to discover the fire. He was outside walking toward the school when he thought he smelled smoke.
Puzzled, he looked around until he saw a red light glowing through a basement window. He rushed toward the fire but saw it was already too big to fight by himself.
"I figured it was so big, there was nothing I could do," he said later. "I didn't have nothing with me. Only my two hands. I was worried mainly about getting the children out of the school." Four of his own children were in OLA that day.
He ran to the closest phone, which was in the church rectory, where priests lived, across an alley. He burst into the kitchen and found the housekeeper, fixing a sauce for the priests' dinner.
"Call the fire department, quick!" Mr. Raymond shouted. "The school's on fire!"
Then he ran back to the burning building.
"I dashed into the boiler room, which is right across the way," he later said. "There were two little boys in there, with wastepaper baskets. I told them to drop the baskets and get back. ... I chased them right out."
Meanwhile, a salesman drove by the school and saw smoke pouring out of the building's basement. He pulled over to the curb and looked for one of the red fire-alarm boxes that allowed people on the street to call local firehouses. (In 1958, no one had cell phones.) When he didn't see a red box, the salesman ran to a nearby candy store and asked to use the telephone.
Store owner Barbara Glowacki didn't feel comfortable letting strangers into her back room to use the phone, so she told him she didn't have a public telephone.
"The school next door is on fire!" the salesman yelled as he rushed out the door to find another phone.
Not sure whether to believe him, Mrs. Glowacki went outside to check. At first she thought the school looked the same way it always did. Then she saw a bright-orange flame through a basement window. She ran inside and called the fire department. "Our Lady of the Angels School is on fire!" she said. "Hurry!"
The emergency operator was calm. "Somebody called it in already," he said. "Help is on the way."
But help did not come immediately. The rectory housekeeper had given the fire department the rectory's address rather the school's address. The rectory was around the corner and about half a block from the fire's location. The first fire truck lost precious minutes going to the wrong address.
Once firemen arrived at the rectory and recognized the mistake, they had to reposition their trucks and hook their hoses to different water hydrants. Even then, they did not have the extra equipment and extra men they would normally take to a building as big as Our Lady of the Angels School.
Inside the school, most of the teachers and students still did not know that anything was wrong. The school's fire alarm had not rung, and everyone continued to follow regular end-of-the-day routines.
But the fire in the basement stairwell was getting bigger. It began climbing — and consuming — the wooden staircase to the school's first floor. A closed door blocked the fire from entering the first-floor hallway and classrooms.
Hungry for oxygen, the fire rushed up another flight of stairs. On the second floor, there were no doors separating the stairs from the hallway. Thick black smoke poured into the corridor and pressed against classroom doors. Meanwhile, hot air and gases inside the basement wall began flowing upward to a shallow space above the second-floor ceiling.
Some kids began to fan themselves. They knew it was cold outside — only 17 degrees Fahrenheit — but their classrooms were getting awfully hot.
CHAPTER 2ROOM 208
* * *
The heck with this, Sister. I'm getting out of here.
— OLA seventh grader
* * *
At the top of the stairs, seventh graders in Room 208 were the first to feel the heat. Eleven-year-old Luci Mordini remembers someone saying, "It's really hot in here. Can we open the transom over the door?" Transoms — small glass windows over classroom doors — were normally kept shut.
The teacher — a gentle, scholarly nun named Sister Mary Saint Canice Lyng, known to her 47 students as Sister St. Canice — gave permission, and a boy pulled a long rod that was supposed to open the transom. But the transom didn't budge.
Then the classroom door began to rattle, like a breeze was shaking it. At first Sister St. Canice thought eighth graders were in the hallway playing with the door handle again. For some reason they liked to do that, and she supposed she would have to correct them again. But when she opened the door, a dense fog of smoke rolled into the room. She immediately slammed the door shut.
The classroom had another door near the back of the room. A boy opened it a crack, but when he saw the black smoke, he slammed that door shut too.
"Then it was like a Steven Spielberg movie," remembers Serge Uccetta (pronounced Surge You-set-ah), who sat in the row of desks closest to the windows. "All of a sudden, smoke started coming in from the crack between the bottom of the door and the floor. And that was scary."
Several kids jumped in alarm, and some screamed. Calmly, Sister St. Canice told everyone to sit down. The fire department was surely on its way. In the meantime, she said, they should all pray. She walked up and down the classroom aisles, trying to reassure kids with the light touch of her hand on their shoulders.
The classroom was quiet for a moment as everyone listened for sirens. They didn't hear any, and the room was growing dark with a thick, oily smoke that made breathing difficult. Serge pulled out a handkerchief to cover his mouth and nose.
Another boy stood up. "The heck with this, Sister," the boy said. "I'm getting out of here."
Kids began rushing for the windows. Some taller boys pushed them open, and everyone crowded around, trying to reach the fresh air. The windows were high, about four feet off the floor, and there were only four of them, so it was hard for everyone to find a pocket of air.
Andy Lego, a short boy who sat in the front row, hoisted himself onto one of the window ledges and looked out. He saw flames shooting out the window on the stair landing next to their classroom. "I can still see the flames," Andy says, more than half a century after the fire. "To this day, I close my eyes and see those flames."
Inside the classroom, the air was becoming dense and black. Some seventh graders cried and called for their mothers.
Andy knew he had to get out. He'd always had a terrible fear of heights, but he forced himself to crawl outside onto the window ledge. Behind him, he heard glass shatter — probably the transom over the door — as he let himself down over the ledge. "I hung there by my fingertips for what seemed like 14 hours, but was really about two seconds," he remembers. "And then I let go."
A hard roof over a basement door broke his fall. Andy rolled off and dropped to the ground. His only injury was a sprained ankle. "I was one of the first ones out," he says. "I hit the ground just as neighbors were beginning to bring ladders."
Neighbors who'd seen or smelled the fire were grabbing household ladders and running to the school. Other second-floor windows did not have roofs beneath them. And with the hall and stairs blocked by thick smoke and hungry flames, windows seemed to be the only way out of second-floor classrooms in the north wing. Without a roof or awning to break their falls, most kids faced a 25foot drop to the alley below.
The neighbors' ladders were far too short to reach the second-floor windows, so some kids began jumping to the alley.
Still holding a handkerchief over his mouth and nose, Serge Uccetta waited at one of the windows for his turn to jump. He watched a boy in front of him jump to the alley and not get up. The boy lay perfectly still.
Then Serge saw Mr. Raymond rushing toward the school with the tall ladder he used for repairs. Please, Serge thought, bring the ladder here — to this window! He thought about throwing down one of his shoes to get the janitor's attention. But Serge figured he would need both shoes if he had to jump to the alley. So he threw down his glasses.
The glasses caught Mr. Raymond's attention, and he brought the ladder to Serge's window. Although this ladder was taller than most of the ladders neighbors brought, it still wasn't tall enough to reach the second floor. So Serge scrambled out the window and hung from the ledge, just like Andy had done, before letting himself drop to the ladder. He wasn't hurt, but he had to climb down and get out of the way quickly because so many kids were dropping and jumping from windows.
One girl remembers hesitating at a window as she watched boys jump and crack their heads on the alley below. "I thought I was going to die either way because the window sill was burning," she remembers.
Then one of her classmates suggested that they form a human chain to lower themselves to Mr. Raymond's ladder. Kids were pushing and shoving, but she got out of the window and held on to the legs of the boy above her until she dropped safely to the ladder.
Several other kids later said that Sister St. Canice helped them escape. She dropped them to ladders or even pushed them out of windows in an attempt to save them from the deadly fire.
Luci Mordini is not sure how she got out. "I was sitting on the window frame, with my legs out, and I think I was holding onto the window frame," she says. Maybe somebody pushed her out. Or maybe she fell out when the roof collapsed.
Even though she doesn't remember how she got out of Room 208, Luci is pretty sure she did not jump. "There were kids lying on the ground already, and they weren't moving," she remembers. "There were no firemen yet. So I don't think I would have [jumped]. I'm not that brave."
Luci also doesn't remember what happened next because she passed out. "When I woke up, I was already away from the school building and some man was talking to me," she says. She thinks this man took her, along with at least one other kid, to the hospital in his car. "I left for the hospital before any firemen even showed up."
Luci stayed in the hospital for 24 days and spent several months recovering at home. Today she still has scars from the burns she got while sitting on that hot windowsill.
But she is alive. Twelve of her classmates died that day. When firemen came into Room 208 later, they found the body of Sister St. Canice, draped protectively over the bodies of several girls. Evidently, firemen said, she had tried to shield them from the fire and its deadly fumes for as long as she could.
CHAPTER 3ROOM 207: THE CHEESE BOX
* * *
Is this how I'm going to die?
— Kathy Galante
* * *
About the time Sister St. Canice first saw smoke in the second-floor hallway, other people were seeing and smelling signs of fire too. One of the first was a girl in a classroom that had been nicknamed the Cheese Box because of its small size.
Once used as the school library, the Cheese Box was separated from other classrooms in the north wing by hallways on three sides. Across the hall and kitty-corner from Sister Canice's classroom, the Cheese Box held a combined class of 41 fifth- and sixth-grade students.
The kids in the Cheese Box were all passing quiz papers forward when a girl pointed to the transom over the door.
"Sister," she said, "I see smoke."
Sister Mary Geraldita Ennis — a peppy young nun called Sister Geraldita — moved quickly to the classroom's front door. When she opened it, she saw a wall of flames coming toward the Cheese Box.
She slammed the door and sprinted to the classroom's other door, at the back of the room. This back door — which opened to a short hallway that led to OLA's only fire escape — was always kept locked. Even during fire drills, students never used the fire escape. Instead, they formed a line to march across the hall and down the north wing's back stairs. But those stairs were now filled with flames. Sister Geraldita normally kept the key to the back door on a key ring attached to her belt. But when she looked down at her belt that afternoon, she saw her keys were not there. She had forgotten to bring them to school that day.
Sitting at the desk closest to the back door, 10-year-old Matty Plovanich watched his teacher. "I will never forget the look on her face," he says. "It was complete panic and anguish."
Sister Geraldita leaned against the back door and tried to push it open. When that didn't work, she took several steps back and ran at the door. When that failed too, she enlisted the help of two sixth-grade boys, who were the biggest kids in the class.
The boys stood about 20 paces from the door and followed the nun's instruction to run and throw themselves against the door as hard as they could. They did what she said, but the door did not budge. The boys tried again. Still, the door stood firm.
Then the glass transom over the main door burst. "The smoke really began to billow into the classroom," Matty remembers. "That's when the panic started."
Kids ran to the windows, screaming for help. The Cheese Box had only two windows, which looked down on an empty walkway between the school and the rectory. With the rectory's windows closed against the cold day, no one could hear the kids screaming inside the Cheese Box.
Sister Geraldita picked up a pot of geraniums from her classroom and threw it against the rectory. The crashing sound brought the priests' housekeeper outside.
"Help! Help!" the kids cried. "The school's on fire! We can't get out!"
The housekeeper ran back into the rectory and called Father Charles Hund, a young priest who had gone to bed that afternoon because he wasn't feeling well. Father Hund came outside, saw the problem, and told the kids to stay there. He said he would get them out.
But the Cheese Box continued to fill with smoke. Sister Geraldita gathered her students around her, near the locked back door. Instructing them to kneel, she led them in the Act of Contrition — a Catholic prayer that expresses sorrow for past sins. Then she led the kids in another Catholic prayer, the Rosary: "Hail Mary, full of grace. Blessed art thou amongst women. ..."
The steady repetition of familiar prayers quieted the class. Some kids realized that Sister Geraldita was preparing them for their deaths. Later, they described a strange peacefulness that came over them, as if they were being lulled to sleep.
But other kids resisted. One boy ran to a window, jumped out, and landed on the fire escape below. He was obviously hurt (and later needed to be hospitalized), so other kids decided to stay in the Cheese Box.
"I really did not have the guts to jump," Matty Plovanich says. He recalls feeling strangely detached, as if he were watching the scene in his classroom from a distance. In his mind's eye, he also saw another scene, with his parents and his three brothers. They were all sitting around the kitchen table in their apartment, with an empty chair at the place where Matty normally sat. "Their faces were kind of grim and bowed down," he says, "and I felt bad because I knew they were going to miss my presence."
One of his classmates, Kathy Galante, also remembers feeling sadly calm: "I thought to myself, Is this how I'm going to die?"
Soon the classroom was filled with so much smoke that kids couldn't see each other or even their own hands. But they still heard Sister Geraldita's voice. Following her instructions, they crouched down until their faces touched the floor, near the last breathable air.
"I had my head down to the floor at the end, and I had my eyes closed," Matty remembers. "I knew the floor was there only because I could feel it. When I opened my eyes, I couldn't see anything, left or right. I mean, I couldn't see anything. It was total darkness."
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The School's on Fire!"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Rebecca C. Jones.
Excerpted by permission of Chicago Review Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Chapter One: December 1, 1958Chapter Three: Room 208
Chapter Four: Room 207 — the Cheesebox
Chapter Five: Room 210
Chapter Six: Room 209
Chapter Seven: Room 211
Chapter Eight: Room 212
Chapter Nine: The Annex
Chapter Ten: The Rest of the Building
Chapter Eleven: Out of the Ashes
Chapter Twelve: Healing
Appendix One: In Case of Fire
Appendix Two: Resources
Acknowledgments
Index