ENGINE 205/LADDER 118 FIREHOUSE 74-76 MIDDAGH STREET BROOKLYN HEIGHTS, BROOKLYN DIVISION 11, BATTALION 32 “FIRE UNDER THE BRIDGE"
1876 - BROOKLYN THEATER FIRE - 278 DEAD - ENGINE 5 BFD (ENGINE 205) - 1ST DUE (PART 7)
A high, wide column of smoke, darker than the night sky and orange-tinged by the flames roiling out of the stage doors, was already surging skyward as Engine 5 made the turn onto Fulton, and, as the guys spotted it and shouted 'We got us one!' or similar words they were also speculating as to just which of the several buildings near that box they had going. That question was answered in dramatic fashion when Engine 5's two-wheeled hose wagon and big Amoskeag steamer wheeled to the right onto Johnson, and the crew spotted flames boiling out of both the stage door and the 20 foot wide scenery doors, rolling halfway across Johnson Street, then curling upward, lighting the narrow street up like daylight. Even from a block away they could hear the crackle and rumble of fire over the clatter of wheels, pounding of hooves, and clanging of the apparatus bells. Something...maybe a scenery flat or a crate...was protruding from the scenery door like a burning tongue sticking out of a fire-breathing demon's mouth, and several men were backing away from the door, facts that Engine 5's veteran foreman (Lieutenant today) Fred Manning made note of even as he spotted a couple of hundred people milling around on Washington Street.
Second Due Engine 6 was only about a tenth of a mile further away, coming from the east, off of Jay Street, and just may have been coming down Johnson Street from the other end as Engine 5 pounded towards the burning theater from Fulton Street...Manning probably had his crew hold up at Johnson and Washington...they could start hitting it from two sides and hopefully keep it confined to the theater...
"Fred!!!' Manning looked around to see a BPD 1st Precinct officer standing next to the pumper, pointing and gesturing towards the theater's main entrance. "'We still got people inside on the stairs!!!"
And
that changed the game plan in a big way...Life has always come before property. Engine 6 could start setting up the fire attack...Manning probably took his crew and headed for the main entrance of the theater. I have a feeling that, even as the crew headed for the main entrance, the sky suddenly lit up as flames cooked through the roof above the stage and boiled upward into the smoke column, lighting it from within.
The Crown Jewel of Brooklyn's Theaters wasn't long for the world, nor were nearly 300 of it's occupants.
Smoke rolled across the theater's high ceiling and into the Family Circle early on in the incident, and it's very possible the Family Circle's occupants realized just how bad the situation was a minute or so earlier than everyone else, They didn't believe Kate Claxton's declaration that it was a minor incident for even a second, panicking and bolting as acrid, eye and lung burning smoke began banking down and filling the gallery. Four hundred people were all trying to get through the curtained exit and down that first short stairway, around the turn, and down the second stairway, against the theater's south wall at the same time.
The curtain in the archway at the Family Circle entrance probably got ripped down early on as parents tried to shield their kids, only to be separated from them, and people literally climbed over each other to get out. Charles Straub and Joe Kreamer had seats in the back of the gallery, very near the exit, and they both decided that the time to un-ass the building was 'now' when smoke boiled into the gallery, so they were on the leading edge of the seething mob pouring out of the Family Circle. They made it down the first short stairway, around that first ninety degree turn at the landing, and rode the crest of the panicked human wave down the south stairway's steps, stumbling and catching themselves a couple of times until they hit the bottom of the stairs and had to hang a right into the corridor that crossed over the lobby.
A panicked mob moves through a passage very much like a flood-swollen river crashing through a street, bouncing off of obstacles or rolling over them rather than going around. Charles Straub somehow made it around the turn to ride the crowd down that corridor, but I have a feeling that his friend Joe Kreamer got slammed into the wall, and trapped there by the crowd.
Straub actually fell once, and felt the soles of his fellow theater-goers' shoes slamming across him for a second or two until he somehow managed to drag himself up and regain his footing. Smoke had followed them into the corridor, and he noticed the gas lights getting dimmer as he pounded towards the final turn and last flight of steps, thinking that the lights were dimming due to the smoke, but actually the gas lines had been breached, and gas pressure was dropping (Even as the escaping gas helped feed the fire).
Somehow Straub managed to keep his footing and ride the crest of the human wave down the corridor past the Family circle box office and around the turn onto the stairway down to the entrance (Managing also to avoid Joe Kreamer's likely fate),
then down the stairway itself, likely stumble-tumbling the whole way, finally emerging into the chilly chaos of Washington Street about the same time the first of the Dress Circle survivors emerged from the main entrance. He'd later tell investigators and reporters that he thought that around 25 people got out before he did and a similar number after him...he waited for about 45 minutes, but his friend Joe Kreamer never came out, nor did Straub ever see him again.
Charles Vine had been sitting in one of the Family Circle's front rows when Kate Claxton claimed that the fire was minor, and while Vine applauded her nerve and bravery he knew she was lying, because he could see the smoke already wafting across the ceiling as well as the flicker of flames backstage. When the Family Circle occupants all but stampeded the exit, Vine was right behind them, at least for a second or so, until he saw men literally running over women and pushing kids to the floor. He quickly realized that the stairways and corridors leading to the street were becoming death traps, so he stopped and looked for another way out. He first made his way across the gallery, to a window on the Flood's Alley side of the building, thinking he could jump. He shoved the window up, looked out...and realized that he'd have a 40 or so foot drop onto a cobblestone street if he jumped. Most likely instant death when he slammed into the pavement, horrible, debilitating injury at the best. He quickly scrapped that idea, and looked around for a plan 'B', knowing he 'd have to work fast to have
any chance of making out of the building alive.
The din had become unimaginable in the few seconds since he'd left his seat, with mothers calling for children and husbands, men cursing and calling for their wives, and children scream-crying high-pitched wails of terror. Smoke was really beginning to roll into the balcony, finding it's way into lungs and adding seizure-like coughing to the shouts and screams. He had to get out of here
now, Vine knew...he quick-walked to the half-wall at the front of the balcony and looked down. The Dress Circle extended several rows farther out than the Family Circle, so he was actually looking down at the third or so row of the Dress Circle's seats, and that would only be a 15 or so foot drop . He climbed over, then hung on to the edge of the half wall, hanging for a second or two before letting go.
When he landed he managed to straddle a seat back, and the decorative iron filigree on the seat ripped his trousers and tore into his thigh before he flipped over backwards and folded into a heap between two seats, smacking his head on something while he was at it. He pulled himself upright and found himself bleeding but alive. And wonder of wonders, he found the Dress Circle all but empty. He turned towards the exit, jumping as someone with the same idea but far less luck than him bounced off of the Dress Circle's half wall and plummeted into the parquet circle. Vine limped to the exit and down the steps just as Sweeney, Cain, and Engine 5's guys were getting the last of the Dress Circle occupants off of the stairway. He looked down to see a woman who had been trampled by the crush, picked her up, and carried her to the Washington Street exit. He was probably the last Family Circle occupant to make it out alive.
As Charles Straub all but tumbled down the steps leading to the Family Circle's street exit in a controlled fall, one of the panic-crazed patrons in the deadly passageway behind him also fell, and as he or she fell, everyone else kept stampeding over them, trampling them, until finally another person tripped over them, and
that person's fall brought down a third person, then a fourth and fifth tripped over them...
...And suddenly it was a deadly game of dominoes as more people fell while everyone behind the fast-growing pile up kept coming and trying to pile, climb, or jump over the fallen mass of people, only succeeding in adding to the pile as everyone behind
them piled on, fell, and trapped
them. This in turn trapped the people who were still on the south stairway, who
still tried to push their way into the corridor. With-in seconds there was a pile of intertwined, tangled, terrified people stacked 4 feet deep for nearly the entire length of the corridor...and it only got worse.
First, the lights finally dimmed to inconspicuous glimmers, then died completely as the gas lines burned through, and gas pressure dropped to zilch, leaving them in pitch black darkness, sending wails of pure animal terror echoing through the corridor. Then, when Rocheford opened the emergency exit and that cross draft from the stage doors turned the burning stage into a raging inferno, shoving the smoke and fire out into the auditorium, all that smoke and fire rolled across the theater's ceiling and directly into the Family Circle.
There was enough pressure behind the smoke to slam a solid horizontal column of heat and smoke bodily down the stairs and into the corridor at tremendous speed, One second the panicked mob fighting their way through the twisting passageway were in clear, breathable air, the next second an avalanche of thick, caustic smoke boiled through the passage, engulfing them, and the next breath they took was a lung full of caustic acid, their eyes burning as smoke mingled with tears. And it was at that second that many of those who died breathed their last.
When the fire popped through the roof over the stage it ventilated the building, actually drawing smoke
out of the structure and clearing the Dress Circle of smoke (This may have even happened as the group who tried to use the center emergency door made their way back up to the Dress Circle, facilitating their escape)...but not the Family Circle or the twisting passageway to the Family Circle exit. After they cleared the stairway, BFD District Chief Engineer (Equivalent to a Battalion Chief today) Farley took a crew up and into the Dress Circle to make a quick search, Crouching through that doorway was like walking into a scene form Dante's Inferno, with crazy shadows, swirling smoke, and a boiling, rolling smoke ceiling flaring orange at them as it reflected the flames from the burning stage and parquet circle. The balcony itself was orange hued from the flames and even with the building vented, they felt like they were touring the inside of an operating furnace.
Farley and his firefighters called '
Anybody in here!' several times to be answered only by the rumble of flames and ominous crashing sounds from back stage...the building was beginning to come apart on them. Another crew made it maybe a quarter way to the burning stage in the Parquet circle, watching flames leapfrog across seats as they also called out to anyone still inside the theater...neither crew found anyone, and Chief Farley, knowing exactly what those ominous crashes meant, told everyone to back out.
Out on Washington Street, a third crew made it into the Family Circle entrance and up the steps, but no further, probably meeting a wall of smoke and definitely meeting a wall of darkness as soon as they hit the corridor...they never got within yards of the pile-up of bodies, and even if they had, it wouldn't have made a difference.. Needless to say, they got no response when they called out.
Brooklyn Chief of Department Tom Nevins probably recognized the box number when the bells banged it out, knew it was in the high value district near City Hall, and decided to respond from home, or he may have been responding from a station, but which ever it was, he arrived on scene at about 11:26 PM, probably as the Dress Circle evacuation was finishing up and just before the searches took place. He
knew the building was lost as soon as he rolled up, and on top of that he had an
evil list of exposure problems facing him.
The Dieter Hotel was
severely exposed, butting up to the burning theater on two sides, while the First Precinct station, which butted up against the burning theater's south wall, was only slightly less severely exposed. There was a row of frame houses across Flood's Alley from the fire, and the wind was threatening to take the fire across Johnson Street. The very
first thing he did is send an aid to the nearest box, telling him, basically, 'Hell with a second, strike the third alarm', and and told him to, after he struck the third, make a lap around the building to report on conditions. (In these long ago, pre-radio days and right on up to the mid or late 1950s or so, the OIC of a fire would stay pretty much rooted, where he could be found, and have an aid come to him to report on conditions. While the Incident Commander still stays at the Command Post today, modern communication technology makes it far easier for he or she to keep themselves aware of conditions on a fire scene, especially a large, complicated scene such as the theater fire.).
I'm guessing here, but Chief Nevins probably set his command post up at Washington and Johnson, or maybe at the First Precinct...both were centrally located and away from the main body of fire. The roof was in over the stage and possibly over part of the auditorium by then, and fire was probably blowing thirty or more feet straight up, rolling into the smoke column that it was punching skyward, and the entire area was lit up like noon-time. The aid ran down Johnson Street, past Engine 5, (whose engineer was setting up a water supply as other firefighters pulled line off of the hose wagon), and the hotel, trotting towards the orange-lit rectangles that had been the stage and scenery doors (With the roof gone, the fire was rolling straight up and no longer rolling out of the doors.) He stopped short when he cleared the hotel, and looked over at the Johnson Street side of the building. The doors were not the only openings showing fire...
"Holeeee Sh..." The aide spun and hauled ass back down Johnson Street...in the background he could hear the citywide bells banging out '3-3-3' and the box number as the second and third alarms were dispatched together. 'Were' gonna
need em' he thought as he yelled 'Chief...
Chief!' Chief Nevins turned to look at him; "If we've got anyone in the building we need 'em out, Johnson Street wall's getting ready to go!'
District Eng. Farley had already pulled his people out of the building (And probably also reported to Chief Nevins that they found no one inside) so Chief Nevins began setting up for a long,
long defensive operation, and even as he made sure everyone
was out of the theater, then sent crews into the Dieter Hotel to make sure it had been evacuated, and deployed the incoming second and third alarm companies, they heard a crunching crash...the upper portion of the Johnson Street side of the theater had folded in on itself and collapsed inward, kicking the lintels over the stage and scenery doors and the wall between the two doors outward as it did so. When the wall fell in, it probably took most of the back stage and stage into the basement along with it, as well as a hunk of the parquet circle and some of the Dress and Family Circles.
The collapse opened the auditorium wing up wide, allowing a humongous influx of air to pour into the building, shoving the fire all the way through the wing and out into the lobby. As the auditorium wing became fully involved, Chief Nevins made a decision. This was decades before there were any master stream devices or aerial ladders/water towers capable of delivering 'Big Water'...500 GPM plus in a single stream...and their only option was 2 1/2 inch hand lines capable of flowing around 250 GPM apiece. Most of Brooklyn's engines were probably 2nd size steamers, capable of pumping 600 GPM, and Brooklyn had 13 engine companies at the time. With 3 alarms in, Nevin probably had 9 of them on scene.
The theater, he well knew, was lost, Let it burn out and use his resources to keep the fire from taking the entire block. OF course, fire was lighting up the night sky and punching an orange-bottomed smoke column skyward that was visible for
miles, and people were showing up in groups to watch the fire, even catching the ferry over from New York. At one point as many as 5000 people were watching the theater burn as firefighters fought...pretty successfully, I might add...to contain the fire to the building of origin.
The fight to save the rest of the block turned into an all-night battle, and Chief Nevins' exact tactics and just how he deployed his resources have been lost to history, unless there's a nearly century and a half old fire report hiding out in some New York City basement somewhere. I can just about bet, though, that put lines on the roof of the First Precinct, possibly put lines inside and possibly on the roof of the hotel, and had engines on hydrants on all four corners of the block, with firefighters pouring water onto the exposures, and possibly into the fire. They not only kept the fire from taking the block, thanks to the fact that the theater's smaller entrance wing was separated from the auditorium by a solid wall, they actually kept it out of the theater's second and third floor offices and apartment.
Brand control would have been a huge part of the job as the burning theater spit sparks and firebrands the size of dinner plates skyward, and firefighters kept a Niagara of water on the exposures to keep the brands from lighting them off. Pumpers chugged loudly, punching smoke columns skyward that rivaled the smoke from the fire itself . Then, sometime around 1:00 AM there was a drawn out, clattering crash as the Flood's Alley wall kicked out and collapsed into the narrow passageway, exposing the houses across the alley to massive radiant heat, and likely causing the quick redeployment of lines to protect them. At least, Chief Nevins likely thought to himself as the cold, fiery night dragged on and on, it looks like everyone got out...
OF course, the Chief didn't know that, as the balconies and that convoluted set of stairways and passages that provided access to the family circle collapsed into the basement, they took the bodies of nearly three hundred people with them. They wouldn't realize this grisly fact for hours.
Kate Claxton, if she did indeed go to the 1st Precinct station immediately after she got out of the theater, slipped out sometime later, and silently freaked out. A reporter found her wandering on Washington Street an hour or more after the fire started, still dressed only in her costume and shivering with cold. and assisted her back to the police station, where she was placed in the Captain's office under the care of a police officer. She was sobbing softly, wondering where H.S. Murdoch (Who had perished in his dressing room, unbeknownst to anyone at that point) and asking them to search for him. Ultimately a coat was found for her and she was driven to the Pierrepoint House, at Hicks and Montague Streets, where the cast was staying.
As Kate Claxton was taken care of and driven to her hotel, the fire slowly burned out. The south wall above the 1st Precinct station, which wasn't subjected to as intense a fire as the North and East (Johnson Street and Flood's Alley) walls held and fire never extended to the hotel. By 4 AM or so, there was nothing left but soggy, smoking remains and
lots of overhaul. The crowds had gone back home, and reporters with deadlines to make had left the scene to file their stories so reports of the fire could appear in the early editions of the morning papers...
Which reported that the theater had been destroyed, and that there had been injuries, but no deaths.
HUH???
The papers needed to get the story into the early editions of the morning papers...they had a major fire that a majority of people in two cities were aware of. That fire that had destroyed a well known and well regarded entertainment venue while a play was in progress, chasing hundreds of people into the December cold and imperiling a beloved actress who had risked her life to try and calm the fleeing theater-goers. To
not get a story about the fire into the early editions would be a major journalistic fail on any number of levels. So the papers went with what they knew as of about 3 AM. And that was that there were no reported deaths.
The thing is, by the time the fire burned almost out, the cops and firefighters seriously suspected otherwise. People were showing up at the 1st Precinct in droves, asking about relatives who hadn't returned home. And at about 3 AM, Chief Nevins tried to get into the Lobby from the Washington Street entrance. The three story section of the Lobby wing containing the offices, apartments, box office, and Family Circle street stairs was almost a separate structure, separated from the auditorium and rear portion of the lobby by brick walls that were only pierced on the 1st floor by the archway into the rear portion of the lobby, where the Dress Circle stairs were, and the entrance to the passageway that Kate Claxton and her group used to make their escape. While the Auditorium and rear portion of the lobby had completely collapsed, the small three story wing facing Washington Street was still standing, even though the lobby itself had been pretty well involved at one point.
The main entrance on Washington Street the morning after the fire...note the large group of people at the entrance to the 1st Precinct's station, all of whom are very likely seeking information about loved ones who didn't return home after attending the performance the night before. The entrance to the Family Circle stairway is visible immediately to the left of signboard nearest the camera.
This was
hours after the bodies had been discovered, most likely, and if you Look at the upper left of the frame you can also see a couple of men on the roof, apparently surveying both the the damage to the auditorium wing and the body recovery operation from above.
This section of the theater was basically a separate building, and very little fire entered the second and third floors...the windows aren't even broken. From this side of the building it's difficult to imagine that almost 300 people had lost their lives only hours earlier.
