Tinder Box: The Iroquois Theatre Disaster 1903 Book

This is the one-hundredth anniversary year of the worst single building fire and the most horrible theater disaster in US history.At a Christmas week matinee December 30, 1903, more than 600 people, mostly women and children, perished in less than 30 minutes in a five-week-old theater that was advertised as being "Absolutely Fireproof" and one of the most luxurious playhouses ever built in America—the epitome of Twentieth Century luxury, comfort and safety. Rushed to completion because of corporate greed, the Iroquois opened in Chicago's Loop without exit signs, firefighting equipment, sprinkler system, fire alarm, telephone, a completed ventillation system and exterior fire escapes because city buiding inspectors had been paid off in free tickets and fire department and other officials looked the other way. Published warnings went unheeded. When fire broke out from a short circuit in a backstage spotlight, the panicked audience found itself locked in by untrained ushers and though leading comedian Eddy Foy begged for calm, people trampled one another in a mad dash to escape and piled up at exit doors that, even when broken open, swung in rather than out. Hundreds jumped or were pushed from the incomplete fire escapes into what became known as "Death Alley." The disaster, which for 1903 had the impact that the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, stunned the world, closed theaters and ultimately resulted in fundamental changes in building and safety codes now taken for granted, such as illuminated exits signs, panic bars, doors that swing out, not in and fire retardant materials. However, questions remain as to whether today's theaters and movie houses are any safer in a panic situation, and some fire experts interviewed by the author say that another Iroquois disaster could again occur.

Author Biography: Anthony P. Hatch, a native New Yorker raised in Chicago, is a former print, wire service and broadcast newsman. He began investigating the Iroquois disaster in 1961 while he was with CBS News. He was interested in the similarities between the Iroquois and the Titanic disaster which occured nine years later. He was able to get eyewitness details from five elderly men directly involved in the Iroquois horror: a cub reporter for a Chicago newspaper who covered the theater's opening night and returned five weeks later to report on the disaster; a fireman who fought the blaze and later became Chicago fire commissioner; a wire service reporter called in from his beat at the stock yards; a Northwestern student who helped carry out the living and dead and a child who escaped from the theater by being passed, hand over hand, above the heads of fleeing adults. Hatch currently is general manager of public radio station KSFR in Santa Fe and teaches broadcast news at the University of New Mexico's School of Communications and Journalism. His written articles have appeared in The Nation, TV Guide, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Herald Examiner, and the Santa Fe New Mexican. This is his first book.