By Gregory Havel
Saturday,December 1, 2012, was the 54th大火周年Our Lady of the AngelsCatholic School in Chicago, Illinois. Three of the sisters who taught at theschool和92 children died. Many more were injured by heat, smoke, and jumping from windows to escape the fire.
The school had about 1,600 students in kindergarten through eighth grade, with about 1,400 in the main school building in grades two through eight. The school was overcrowded, with about 60 students in each of the 24 classrooms.
该学校是III型建筑（普通建筑或实体式建筑）。它是2 1/2层高的，地下室½层低于街道。南翼建于1903年，北翼于1910年建造。1951。The school had been remodeled several times.
学校建筑是不具备抵抗fire of any kind. The exterior of the building was brick masonry, but beams, floors, roofs, stairways, doors, and interior partitions were all wood. The hardwood floors were varnished and coated with wax. The walls were covered with layers of oil-based paint. Ceilings were covered with combustible cellulose-fiber acoustical tiles. Each classroom door had a glass transom window above it. Since the ceilings in the building were 12 feet (3.658m) above the floor, and since the window sills were three feet (0.915m) or more above the classroom floors, the second-floor window sills were nearly 25 feet (7.63m) above the schoolyard below.
The fire-alarm system consisted of two manual pull stations in the south wing, and none in the north wing. The fire alarm system had no connection to the fire department dispatch office. Heat and smoke detectors were not present, since in 1958 these were primitive, costly, and not yet readily available.
没有自动消防洒水系统。楼梯不在带有火评价的门的火评估围栏内。唯一的通道逃亡是在北翼一端附近的附件中，需要使用主走廊进入。
The four soda-acid fire extinguishers (Class A inverting-type extinguishers, 2.5 gallons (9.46 liters) each on each floor were mounted seven feet (2.134m) above the floor to prevent students from tampering with them–which also put them out of reach of many adults.
Our Lady of the Angels school had passed a fire department safety inspection only a few weeks before the fire. The school did not have to comply with the 1949 Chicago Municipal Fire Code because of a “grandfather clause” in the code. Existing schools were not required to retrofit the safety devices that were required in all newly constructed schools, and were permitted to remain in compliance with the 1905 Chicago city ordinances.
The fire started between 2:00 and 2:20pm on December 1, 1958, in a cardboard trash barrel in the basement of the north wing at the foot of the northeast stairwell. It burned undetected for 15 to 30 minutes, filling the stairwell with superheated gases and smoke. A window at the foot of the stairs broke from the heat, providing the fire with a new source of oxygen. The wood stairway ignited, as did the rubberized paint on the walls. Superheated gases and smoke bypassed the first floor, which was protected by a heavy wooden door, filling the second floor corridor with gases and smoke since there was no door at the head of the stairway.
At the same time, a pipe chase running between the basement and the cockloft above the second-floor false ceiling acted as a chimney for superheated gases, which filled the cockloft. The temperature rapidly rose until it ignited the exposed wood framing in these concealed spaces. The大火席卷了二楼的走廊in the north wing of the school at the same time that the cockloft above the classroomsflashed over。
Photo above from the January 1959 issue ofFire Engineering (download the article as a PDF这里[3 MB])
By the time the 329 students and five teaching nuns on the second floor of the north wing realized that there was a fire, the only escape route (the corridor) was blocked by heat and smoke. The nuns encouraged their students to sit at their desks or gather in a circle and pray—until smoke and fire broke through the transom windows into the classrooms, ignited the combustible cellulose-fiber ceiling tiles, and forced everyone to the windows. Since the fire department had not yet arrived with engines and ladders, some began jumping, while others fell or were pushed over the three-foot-high window sills to a 25-foot drop to pavement or gravel below.
The first floor classrooms and the second floor classrooms in the south wing were successfully evacuated, as was the second floor classroom with the fire escape in the annex.
消防员在派遣后四分钟内到达，但到那时大火已经失控了。他们的到来之所以延迟，是因为他们被错误地针对拐角处的教区教区，并且在找到正确地址后不得不重新定位设备和设备。他们之所以被推迟，是因为学校的北翼的南窗户俯瞰着一个庭院，该庭院被学校建筑物包围着三个侧面，并用七英尺的铁栅栏在第四侧锁着一个锁着。
Firefighters began rescuing students and nuns over ladders from the second-floor windows, as others continued to jump to escape the flashover of the classrooms. More than 160 children were rescued down ladders, but the rest who died had been unable to get to a ladder or jump from the windows. Of those who jumped, some were killed by the fall and the rest were seriously injured. Many of the smaller children were not able to climb over the window sills and were trapped and died when the classrooms flashed over.
Contributing to the rapid growth of this fire and its tragic results were:
- The construction of the building, with interconnected concealed spaces
- Open stairways
- Lack of fire-rated partitions and doors between corridors and classrooms
- Glass transoms above the classroom doors
- Combustible wood trim and combustible interior finishes
- Lack of a working fire alarm system throughout the building
- Delayed notification of the fire department
- Delayed arrival of the fire department
In the only positive outcome of the tragedy, major changes in school fire safety regulations were enacted nationwide; and the life-safety, fire, and building codes were revised and strengthened, and applied to occupancies in addition to schools.
For more information on this tragic fire, visit the Web sitehttp://www.olafire.comThe Web pages have building plans and three-dimensional models, photographs, national news stories about the fire; and statistics about the building, its occupants, and the fire’s victims.
Also, search the Learning Resource Center’s on-line catalog at the National Fire Academy athttp://www.lrc.fema.gov/index.html; and internet search for “Our Lady of the Angels Fire.”
将本文作为PDF下载这里。
Gregory Havelis a member of the Town of Burlington (WI)Fire Department; retired deputy chief andtraining officer; and a 30-year veteran of thefire service。他是威斯康星州认证的fire instructorII, fire officer II, and fire inspector; an adjunctinstructorinfire serviceprograms at GatewayTechnical大学;和safetyScherrer Construction Co.，Inc。Havel拥有圣诺伯特学院的学士学位；在设施管理和建筑建设方面拥有30多年的经验；并已在FDIC介绍课程。
