Have you ever stopped to think about all the fire safety aspects around you?.. You go pretty much anyplace in public, and you will be surrounded with them... Crash Bars on doors, doors that open outwards, exit signs, etc...
Fires were a very common problem in the theatre for a long time... Did that mean that the theatres led the way to safer standards?... Well not exactly... Those features are an expensive addition to a building, and theatre owners are not known for expending any more money than they need to... Countless theatres have burned to the ground over time... The death toll had been kept down by haveing a large number of exits, and training the staff to help get the audience out of the building in some orderly fashion... Considering how much open flame was used in theatres in the past, it is impressive that there were not too many outrageous disasters.
Well December 30, 1903 changed all that... The Iroquis Theater in Chicago was doing a matnee of Mr. Blue Beard, Jr. Apparently this was a popular show at the time, and the theatre was packed. The space was designed for 1724 patrons, but there were 1900 squeezed in there on this day. Well a fire did indeed break out. In this case a backdrop was touching the back of an arc-type lighting unit. (arc lights are the oldest form of electric light, they produce light similar to the light from a welder, and naturally get extremely hot) Well the fabric caught fire, and then a chain reaction went from there... The safety equipment in the theatre was ineffective, or simply failed to operate at all... The staff had not had any training in evacuateing the theatre... Some of the doors had been barred... Doors opened inward...
The reports claim there were corpses piled ten deep at some of the exits that could not be opened... People jumpped from a fire escape into an alley when the fire spread to something under the escape... The first to do so tied from impact, those that came after them were fortunate to land on the first few people and that was enough cushening to let them live...
When the smoke cleared, 575 people had died, with an additional 27 to die as a result of injuries. This was at the time the deadliest fire in Chicago history, second in the US, and 4th in the world. The "great Chicago Fire" only killed 250...
End result... New regulations were put in place, and became standard acorss the nation... The doors could not be barred, they had to open outward, and the crash bar was introduced. (even if you can't operate the bar, the crushing weight of a crowd would activate it allowing the door to open, probably at the expense of the first person or two, but better than nothing) There also had to be a steel fire curtian to seperate the stage from the audience... Exits now had to be clearly marked, even in the dark... Stage employees and ushers had to be trained to get the people out in an emergency... (used to be policy, now it was law)
Supriseingly, the theatre only suffered minor damage from the fire, and was re-opened in less than a year, as the Colonial Theater.
Posted by Backstage at November 1, 2003 06:52 PM