AMERICAN SCHOOL FIRE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13727, 18 April 1908, Page 2 (Supplement)

AMERICAN SCHOOL FIRE.

165 CHILDREN" DEAD. At least 165 children lost their live?, on March 4 in a disaster at the Lake View Public School, at Collinwood, a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio. Few of the scholars, however, appear to have been burnt to death; most of them were either suffocated or had life trampled out of them. The fire is posed to have started in some rubbish under the stairway, leading up to the third floor. The flames ran up the wooden stair-well with inconceivable rapidity, and almost before the alarm could be spread through the building, the staircases were ablaze. It is usual to ring the school fire-alarm twice in case of emergency, indicating to the children that they are to fall into companies, and, under their respective teachers, to march from the building into the playground. When the two bells sound the children assemble without troubling to get their books, hats, or coats. If four bells are rung less urgency is indicated, and they collect their books and clothes before departure. So far as one may judge, however, the 400 children in the Cleveland school did not trouble to wait for any bell, but, frightened by the smoke, they stampeded and ran towards the doors. Oh the first and second floors were the high school and advanced grade pupils. These rushed pell-mell from the building, and in the wild stampede many of tliem were hurt Meanwhile, the children of the lower grades, numbering more than 100, little boys and girls from seven to ton years of age, were trapped on the. third floor. When the alarm was sounded through the building, these little ones and their teachers made a rush for the hallways. There they were confronted by a roaring wall of fire. '.' Escape by the stairs was cut off, and the whole interior of the building was a. furn- \ ace. The children ran back and crowded to the windows, where they stood screaming in helpless terror. There were only two available • exits from the building, and at one of them no accident occurred. The other, however, soon become choked with children, who madly dashed towards the open air. Most of the victims were killed as the result of the jamb at the main entrance to the school at which the different stairways converged. Many of the pupils fell here, and others behind were piled on top of them in an inextricable mass. It is thought that many of those in the bottom of the heaps of dead were crushed to death before the flames reached them.

Immediately the news of the disaster spread work was stopped at the factories in order that the employees might assist in the work of rescue. Hundreds of parents rushed to the school, and the most pitiful scenes were witnessed. Women were weeping and screaming, and it was all the police could do to prevent many of them from rushing into the fire to try to save the little ones. The Cleveland firemen made a desperate attempt to get to the children, but before they could put a ladder up through the flames to the third floor the lower floors of the school and part of the wall collapsed with a crash. When the smoke partly cleared away, little faces could be seen still at the windows, and shrill cries of terror were borne down from &bove, finding an echo of horror in the cries of the frantic crowd in the streets. The firemen fought with desperation, but the fire gained such headway that it was utterly beyond their control. A deluge could not have drowned the ter-'*> rible flames that leaped and roared upward towards the little children. The firemen say that they distinctly saw through the columns of flame the bodies of the victims writhing in heaps in the basement. Many of the children must have been still living when the floors collapsed. The fire raged uncontrolled for two hours, and it was not till then that the firemen, armed with rakes, pitchforks, and long-handled shovels, were able to explore the. ruins. They found a number of cnarred bodies, from which the limbs and skulls became detached at the slightest touch. It was only by bits of clothing and po' ':et trinkets that many of the children were identified by the parents. A hundred and sixty-five blackened little bodies lie at the morgue, and 13 are missing. It is believed they are burned beneath the wreckage. Ono hundred and eight bodies have been identified, but the remainder are shockingly mutilated, arms, legs, and heads being missing. Hardly one family in the vicinity of Collinwood has escaped bereavement. The scenes at the morgue were most pathetic, especially when mothers and lathers recognised the seared fragments of humanity by means of some scrap of clothing still adhering to the body. . Most harrowing tales are told of the struggles of the little ones to reach a place of safety. Mrs. Phillips said : " I found my daughter among a crowd pinned round the front door and caught her by the hands, but could not puli the child out. I reached in and stroked her head, trying to keep the tire away from her. 1 remained until a heavy piece of glass nearly cut off my hand. Then I. fell back, my child dying before my eyes." A most horrible scene occurred when the back door fell outwards under the weight of the children behind, revealing a pile of white-faced, struggling little ones. The flames immediately swept over the passage-way and out at the door, enveloping the children. Many women who were watching the scene fell fainting with horror.

Miss Wilor, a teacher, perished while standing amidst her pupils, evidently urging them to keep order and not to crowd. Miss Fisk, another teacher, died while trying to escort the children to the fireescape.