Collinwood school fire

Lake View School, Collinwood, Ohio as it appeared before March 4, 1908.
Lake View School, Collinwood, Ohio the morning following the fire of March 4, 1908. 175 people lost their lives in the fire, making it the greatest loss of life in a fire of this type in a school in the United States to that date.

The Collinwood school fire (also known as the Lake View School fire) of Ash Wednesday, March 4, 1908, was one of the deadliest disasters of its type in the United States. The conflagration in Collinwood, Ohio, a community that has since been absorbed into the city of Cleveland, resulted in the deaths of 172 students, two teachers and a rescuer.

Fire

While the Lake View School was built with load-bearing masonry outer walls, much of the four story building's floor structure system used wooden joists. It was one wooden joist that caught fire when it was overheated by a steam pipe. The building’s main staircase extended from the front doors of the building, up to the third floor, and had no fire doors. The stairwell acted like a chimney, helping to spread the fire quickly. Oiled wooden hall and classroom floors also fueled the fire.

Flames quickly blocked escape routes, and many students died pressed against doors that were locked or opened inward. Deputy State Fire Marshall Nathan Flegenbaum inspected the ruins the next day and "declared positively" that the doors of the schoolhouse opened toward the inside and that the rear doors were locked when the children reached them.[1] The flammable construction gave only minutes for evacuation. Though one fire escape was accessible at the rear of the building, not all the children found their way to the exit.[2] Panic led to a crush of a large number of students in a stairwell as students seeking escape rushed up the stairs while students above tried to descend. Most of the victims of the fire died here.[1] Other students died of smoke inhalation or were burned to death. Some children died jumping from second- and third-story windows. Community members watched as victims trapped in the building were burned beyond recognition.

Aftermath

The fire safe building erected after the deadly fire 1911

Those killed in the fire who could not be individually identified, as well as those students whose parents could not afford a burial, were buried in a mass grave in Cleveland's Lake View Cemetery. Additionally, several families who lost their children in the fire chose to bury their children's remains adjacent to the Collinwood victims.[3]

Following the fire, the remains of the Lake View School were demolished and a memorial garden planned for the site. A new school—Collinwood Memorial Elementary School—was built adjacent to the disaster site, and incorporated many features that had been lacking in the previous building. Unlike the building involved in the disaster, the new school incorporated fire-safe stairwells and a central alarm system, and was built of steel framing and other fire-safe materials. Collinwood Memorial Elementary was closed in the 1970s and sat vacant until it was razed in 2004. A third school, simply called Memorial Elementary, was opened in 2005 on the same site with the original memorial to the victims preserved.

In the aftermath of the catastrophic Iroquois Theatre Fire in Chicago, 1903, a national drive was instigated to upgrade safe egress from buildings. Official regulations required that doors now open from the inside and swing outward, thereby facilitating public exit. The installation of what were called "panic bar" latches was mandated for doors in schools. The final casualty of the fire was the independence of the Collinwood community itself. Unable to sufficiently guarantee fire safety resources for its residents, voters approved an annexation of Collinwood into Cleveland within two years of the fire.

See also


References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Hunt for Guilty in Ohio Holocaust". Chicago Tribune. March 5, 1908. p. 1. Retrieved 8 February 2015.
  2. ↑ "165 Children Perish in Fire". New York Times. Archived from the original on 5 March 1908. Retrieved 17 October 2012.
  3. ↑ "Film of the fire and the burial". Provided by the Library of Congress and the Cleveland Public Library. Retrieved 2009-02-06.

Further reading

External links

Coordinates: 41°34′17″N 81°34′32″W / 41.57139°N 81.57556°W