HOTEL HOLOCAUST

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22199, 9 December 1946, Page 7

HOTEL HOLOCAUST

116 PERISH IN ATLANTA FIRE GUESTS’ FRENZIED LEAPS TO DEATH TRAGIC SCENES IN BURNED-OUT ROOMS :‘ ;1 (By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright.) (10 a.m.) NEW YORK, December 8. At least 116 deaths occurred in a fire which swept the Winecoff Hotel in Atlanta’s best-known thoroughfare, Peachtree Street. The deathroll may reach 127. The dead include 25 to 30 persons who leaped from windows to escape from the flames. Those injured exceed 100. The hotel consisted of 15 floors and contained 194 rooms. It is believed that there were 280 gnests in the hotel. The fire appeared to rage from the sixth floor upwards. The fire was first detected by a negro elevator girl about 3.40 a.m, She notified the night manager, who immediately began telephoning warnings to the guests. Scores raced from the biasing; building in their night attire. A few guests escaped by swinigng from window to window on improvised ropes which enabled them to reach rooms untouched by fire or not dangerously filled with smoke.

Leaps Into Rescue Nets

control at 7 a.m. The hotel was supposedly fireproof. Evidence of attempts to escape were found in almost every room. Inadequate ropes had been towels. Many of these improvisations had never been used.

At one stage almost every window in the upper half of the hotel held persons calling for help. Many jumped into nets which firemen were holding below, but hit the nets with such force that the net holders were unable to § revent them from striking the ground, ome missed the nets altogether.

The United Press says that the worst previous hotel fire occurred at Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1883 when 71 perished and also the La Salle Hotel in Chicago in May 1946 when 62 died. The Atlanta City authorities expressed amazement when they learned that the Winecoff Hotel, scene of one of the nation’s worst fire disasters, had no fire escapes or other emergency means of safety.

A fireman said he saw a mother throw two children and herself to death from the seventh floor. Two women stood at the twelth floor window for two hours smiling and waving to the crowds as the fire crept towards them. Finally, the flames reached their floor. One woman collapsed. The other .picked her up and held her until both fell back into the room. Both are believed to have died.

Pathetic Scenes in Mortuaries

The hotel was classed as fire resistant and had been inspected during the past week and met the regulations. Pathetic scenes were witnessed at hospitals and mortuaries where mourners sought to ascertain the fate of loved ones, but many bodies were charred and mangled beyond identification except, perhaps, by dental impressions. The dead included Mr. W. F. Winecoff. one of the builders of’ the hotel and Mrs. WinecofT.

One girl jumped from the fifteenth floor into a rescue net. Both her legs were broken but she is alive. A fireman was killed when a woman, leaping from a high window, crashed on to him as he was ascending the ladder.

One woman escaped by sliding down a rope of knotted sheets from the seventh to the fourth floors where she climbed on to an extension ladder. Ambulances operated shuttle services between the fire and the surrounding hospitals. Thousands of spectators jammed the streets. Servicemen were pressed into rescue operations. Plasma Given to Injured

Pathetically, Charles Boschonz, aged 21 who was honeymooning in the hotel, sought his bride who is still unidentified. He last saw her falling from a rope of sheets.

The hotel guests included 49 boys’ and girls’ delegates to a youth conference whose final meeting was held as scheduled, but it was a memorial service for three youths are dead and 21 missing. One of the starkest discoveries was a young mother praying in the hotel bathroom with three small children clutching her nightdress. They were like a group of fire-blackened statuary.

A Red Cross disaster station was established near the hotel and the guests were given plasma, most of which had been brought back from overseas and made available to the Atlanta Hospitals. The fire was finally brought under