The Circus Fire (12 page)

Everyone had a metaphor. The tent went up like cellophane, like tissue paper, like a fuse. A Roman candle, a sheet of newspaper. It was like tossing a piece of paper in a fireplace, like putting a match to a celluloid collar.

The wind took the fire on top and whipped it across the east grandstands. The west end was still in flames, but now people trapped in the seats and on the floor could look up and see beyond the orange and yellow line of fire—bright, strange as a vision—the clear blue sky.

Animal acts

Once the fire breached the roof, the tent became a chimney, sucking cooler air in through the exits and shooting it hot out the top. The paraffin acted as a constant accelerant; the vast area of the canvas provided an endless supply of fresh oxygen. The temperatures inside were rising, and likewise the panic.

One man in the middle of the grandstands plunged forward, knocking over chairs, women, children and other men indiscriminately, stepping on them when they fell. When last seen, the man was fighting and pushing his way to get ahead of everybody else.

A Manchester woman had gone with her husband and granddaughter. The husband lifted the girl over the railing into the arena and she ran for the exit. The woman was making her way when she "was suddenly confronted with one of those heartrending problems inevitably part of such disasters. Her path was blocked by the prostrate body of a woman. [She] hesitated to step forward and walk over the body. The press of other people behind her and around her kept her from bending to be of possible aid to the fallen woman. But her sensitive indecision was ended when the burning canvas of the big top came down upon her back, badly burning her back and arms. Then she forced her way forward."

The rush was like a human waterfall, like being hurled along by a huge wave breaking. A cadet nurse at St. Francis Hospital and a friend were able to lift up an elderly woman who had fallen to her knees and to drag her along. The two held her tightly until the flow carried them far enough into the open to stumble free. They left the woman in a safe place and redoubled their rescue efforts.

The fire shot right over top of Edward Garrison and his grandmother. The crowd knocked his aunt down and people helped her up but by then

they were separated. The swarm tore his grandmother's hand from his and swept her ahead of Edward. She turned around to see where he was and was dragged backwards, her eyes locked on his.

One woman remembered her mother praying out loud as they held each other, drawn along by the tide.

And still the grandstands bunched up at the gates. At one, a chair was stuck across the opening and the pressure from behind toppled those in front over it so no one could get out. Even when the gates were clear, they were purposefully narrow. Trying to squeeze through, one woman found herself caught and crushed against a steel post, half in, half out. She stretched a hand to her companion and he yanked her free, the crowd squirting through the gap, falling across the track.

Ushers continued to urge the audience to exit in an orderly fashion, though the crush was so tight that people were losing shoes. Some lost their footing and others walked on them. A woman with a child in her arms went down and the crowd closed over her. The jostling was hard. One woman dropped her pocketbook but knew if she bent down to retrieve it she'd be run over. A girl let go of her program; she wanted to stop but the current pushed her on. A boy lost his glasses and stooped over to retrieve them. A man fell over him and they both went down.

Many saw women and children being trampled, but, as a girl from West Cornwall explained: "If I stopped to pick up one of them I would have gone down in a second. We just kept going and were pushed until we got clear of the tent."

Parents had no such luxury, and took advantage of any handhold. When one mother's little boy got knocked down, she snatched him up by his overall straps. But more often when a mother bent to rescue a child, the surge buried her.

A Plainville mother had her two children and a nephew with her as she made for an exit. In the crush an unknown man suddenly reached out and took her youngest son from her arms. She managed to make her way to safety with the other two, but once outside she could find neither her son nor the man.

A Meriden man lost his wife in the scramble, then found her in a mound of bodies and hauled her off. "As I pulled [her] out I found there was a woman under her, and I believe she was dead. The fire was crawling

to the center of the tent, overhead, and the heat was unbearable. By this time, the howling and yelling was beyond description."

Ushers selflessly rushed children to safety and came back for more, while at the same time other circus personnel were deliberately smashing people's cameras. They asked a
Saturday Evening Post
photographer there on assignment not to shoot, and he agreed.

Children were running around crying, trying to find their parents. Some dashed straight back into the thick of the fire.

One man hugged his son to his chest and ran past the bandstand and out into the underbrush at the east end of the lot. "Here and there could be seen men, women and children horribly burned, many wandering aimlessly about, oblivious to advice that they try to get to a doctor as soon as possible. One woman, apparently unaware that she had suffered severe burns to her arms, was trying to comfort a 9 or 10 year old youngster who was also badly burned, mostly about the legs. The child was shrieking in agony and the woman kept telling him that he would be all right as soon as his parents found him. When told by those who had just left the tent that she and the youngster should get to a doctor so that medical care could be administered, she replied, she couldn't until her family was located—she didn't know where they were. She still didn't seem to know she was badly burned. There were indications that the tents which backed up to the main tent would also go up in flames so those who escaped through the rear entrance started down through thick underbrush below, trying to find a way out. A road off to the right about 300 yards from the fire proved a haven for hundreds. From this vantage point, thick black clouds of smoke could be seen billowing skyward. Here also many men, women and children could be seen, some burned rather seriously, others superficially."

Back in the northeast corner of the lot, way off in the woods, sat the show's water trucks. Deacon Blanchfield was supposed to make sure they were on hand during the performance with their engines turning, but somehow he'd forgotten.

The
Hartford Times
reported that the first alarm for the circus fire was turned in by a West Hartford man who detected smoke when he was buying tickets for the evening performance, but the first signal box that came in was number 82 at the corner of Clark and Westland, a good half mile from where he was standing. It rang downtown at 2:44 P.M., sending

Engine Companies 2, 7 and 16, and Truck Companies 3 and 4 to the scene.

In the same minute, box 828 at Barbour and Cleveland tripped, six hundred feet from the front door of the big top, scrambling Engines 14, 4 and 3 and Truck 1.

Sergeant Spellman reached 345 Barbour Street and ran inside, only to find another officer already on the phone yet saying nothing. Fire HQ's line was busy, he explained. The woman who lived there saw the fire and rushed in from outside, thinking she'd call the police. Her seventy-seven-year-old father was at the circus. Spellman took the phone from the other officer and dialed the operator, who told him the line was busy. He explained what the trouble was and she gave him the line.

Spellman told the switchboard that the main circus tent was on fire and to send in two or three alarms. The dispatcher said apparatus was already on the way.

Spellman next called police headquarters and told them that the circus was on fire and to send all available policemen and ambulances there. Without hesitation, HQ relayed the message to the cruisers: Proceed immediately to the circus grounds—pick up every man you can and take them with you. All officers on beats to be picked up and brought to the fire.

At 2:45 box 821 at Charlotte and Barbour and box 836 at Cleveland and Hampton signaled, sending Engine 5.

John C. King, Hartford's veteran fire chief, was in his car when word came over the two-way shortwave. He was about three miles from the scene and directed his driver to go full speed through the streets.

The department's response was immediate and strong. Engine Company 16 on Blue Hills Avenue near the Bloomfield line had four men dressed and ready. In seconds they hopped on a truck and rolled.

The
Hartford Times
was wired into the fire department's signal boxes. In the city room, the alarm went off. Being an evening paper, the
Times
asked its regular reporters to work mornings so they could make deadline. They all got off at noon. The city room was empty except for a few summer interns and other cubs. Another box called in, making everyone look up from their desks. It was going to be a big one. The circus, the police confirmed. The night editor grudgingly assigned a cub to the grounds with two photographers. As they grabbed their jackets, a third alarm went off.

The bravest girl I've ever seen

Don Cook ran across the top of the south grandstand. There was no one up where he was, just chairs and popcorn and Coke bottles. He reached the edge of section E and skipped across the board bridging the narrow entrance below, keeping the flames far behind him, headed for the east end of the tent where the band was still playing the same song. He glanced across the rings and saw people going over the northeast chute, vaulting the bars, crawling on top, the one pair of stairs jammed.

When Edward J. Hickey raced back in through that same narrow opening on the south side, he witnessed the same thing, but they were too far from him and the heat was too much.

The chute was chest high, the iron sections curved at the top and bolted together. Walsh's lions were still in it, even as people frantically clambered across the bars. The propmen never had a chance to move it.

A Middletown man and his family had been seated in W and hit the chute early, before the heaviest crush. As they started over, three attendants on the far side stopped them. The men had sticks to prod the last three lions through. "Get back, get back!" they yelled, waving the crowd off.

"Come on," the father yelled to his children, "go over anyhow."

He'd helped everyone across but his youngest son, who was shorter and heavier than the rest. He set him on top of the chute but the child's foot slipped through the ribs and when the boy looked down, right beneath him was a lion, snarling up, its jaws wide. The boy shied back and slid into his father's arms.

The father tried again, setting his son on the bars, but this time an attendant stopped him, shoving the child and saying, "Get back there." Why, the boy thought, would the man do something like that? The boy slipped between the chute and the edge of the grandstand, and someone knocked him to his knees.

His father reached down and with his arm around the boy's chest and one hand gripping the seat of his pants, hoisted him to the top of the chute above the lions and said, "Never mind what he says. Get over there." He gave the boy a push in the back, and he landed on the far side of the bars.

At the northwest chute, the scene was even worse, the fire almost overhead. May Kovar remained in her cage to drive her five panthers out. Embers were dropping, and she was afraid the cats would turn on each other.

As people pounded down section L, the railing at the end of the grandstand gave way. A woman fell and dropped a child she was carrying on top of the chute. The child's arm dangled between the bars. An attendant prodded the nearest panther, trying to distract him, to keep him moving past, but the cat turned and clawed the child's arm, ripping off part of his sleeve. A man standing on the ribs lifted the screaming child off and passed him to someone on the far side.

The first four went easily, but the last panther in the cage turned on May Kovar. The fire was above her, flaming scraps of tent raining down. The cat was spooked by all the commotion. May Kovar circled it with her wand, giving it room to make a decision, then, when it made for the chute, closed in on it. This time the cat didn't turn. She rapped it with her wand and shoved it in, shutting the door.

The White Tops,
the magazine of the Circus Fans Association of America, would report that the pressure was so great at the door of her cage that May Kovar had to follow her panthers through the chute, but that's just a story, a dramatic image they couldn't resist. In reality she stepped out of the arena door and joined her cageboys shooing the cats back to the wagons.

At the rear of the grandstands, where the chute entered the tent, it changed from iron bars to wooden slats. The wooden section connected with the ramp that led to the individual wagons. Usually the animals came out one by one, separated by boards, but not today. Two panthers with a long-standing feud were surprised to find themselves together in the wooden part of the chute and decided to fight. Another cat raced back in, toward the cage, running under the fire and flaming debris, singeing its fur.