The Circus Fire (10 page)

It did nothing.

The fire was at eye level, a yard wide and five feet high. Another usher tried one bucket, then another. The third usher threw the last one, but the fire was out of reach now. They tried to pull down the sidewall. It was too late; the flames were eating the roof, finding fuel. All they could do now was help the people at that end get out.

The blues right by the fire had already started to clear. Anna Cote remembered: "I looked up to the right over my shoulder and saw the

fire. By the time I turned back around my sister and her girlfriend were gone."

The Wallendas' concentration was locked on their pyramid, the waltz playing softly so as not to startle them and upset their timing. With one wheel of the bike on the wire, Karl sensed the commotion below. From his vantage point he saw the flames creeping up behind the bleachers. Just as Henrietta on the far platform said, "Look," he signaled the others down.

Merle Evans, alert for the slightest deviation in the program, saw Karl's signal, followed where Henrietta was pointing and spotted the flames. He stopped the waltz with a flick of one hand.

From the east end, even from the north side, the fire seemed tiny, "a little ray of light across the tent." There was a moment of stunned surprise, but many in attendance had the same reaction as Detective Beckwith.

In the bleachers right across from it, William Epps said, "Look, Ma, there's a fire over there."

"Don't worry," Mabel Epps said, "they'll put it out."

Surely some circus person would come up with an extinguisher and snuff it. Yet it continued to burn.

Others thought it was part of the show, some kind of joke or surprise. Again, many failed to respond to what they could clearly see, trapped in their own anticipation of the show. They had come to see the circus, so this must be part of it. With no external cues or guidance, they fell back on their original, very narrow goals. Their failure to break out of their routine, despite evidence to the contrary, mirrors the behavior of the crowd at the Beverly Hills Supper Club in Cincinnati in 1977. Though a busboy came out on stage well before that fire had spread and used a microphone to tell everyone to leave, only a few did. They thought the warning was part of the opening comedian's act. One hundred sixty-four people died.

At the far end of the tent, Merle Evans knew the fire wasn't a joke, and he could see Joseph Walsh still had cats in his cage. Evans leaned over the bandstand and yelled to Fred Bradna, "Get those lions out—the tent's on fire."

Bradna saw the smoke by the front door and immediately whistled, calling the Wallendas down and alerting the others. His wife Ella headlined one of the equestrian acts coming up next; he ran for the back door to warn her.

Merle Evans cued the band and they struck up the disaster march, Sousa's "The Stars and Stripes Forever," a signal to show folks that something had gone seriously wrong. Evans chose the tune because every musician knew it by heart. The rest of the tent had no clue.

A policeman at the west end hollered at the exiting bleacher crowd, "Be calm. Walk slowly." Most were. A man halfway up with a boy shouted, "That dirty son of a bitch just threw a cigarette butt!" He dropped the boy over the side to the officer and jumped. "It was a cigarette," the man said, and ran off, the boy in tow.

One of the Wallendas' bikes fell and bounced off the sawdust.

The flames leapt up the roof, and now everybody could see the fire. No one was going to put this out.

The crowd gasped and then let loose a roar. The grandstands stood, and the chairs went over with a deafening clatter, Coke bottles rolling down the risers. Grace Smith grabbed Elliott's hand. Donald Gale stood by Hulda Grant, unsure just what was going on.

The plumed high-school horses were waiting by the back door, getting ready to perform their dressage when Fred Bradna dashed out and ordered them back to the paddock. The Ostermaiers, Los Asveras Troupe and the Bradnas tugged at their reins and whirled their mounts around. Ella Bradna's white charger spooked and backed into the dressing tent, tangling his legs in the guyropes, almost throwing her before she got him under control.

In clown alley, Felix Adler was preparing for the walkaround. "We heard a roar like applause," he remembered. "Only we knew the animal act was over and there shouldn't be applause. We knew then something was wrong. Then we smelled smoke. I got my daughter Muriel out of the danger zone. Then I thought of my pet pig and went back to get him."

Knowing the cat act had just finished, a number of performers thought a lion had gotten loose.

Emmett Kelly was in his little dressing tent, enjoying a cold beer before his star turn in the Pantos Paradise spec. "I heard someone say something about a fire. We were always very conscious of fire. I didn't see any fire. I thought at first it was the sideshow." He ran outside and saw smoke curling up from the front yard. He hoped it was only a straw fire in the menagerie, but the smoke was black—just like the smoke in Cleveland.

Inside, the Wallendas on the north platform hit the rope ladder, Helen and Henrietta first, then Joe, and finally Herman, who thought he had time to lash his bicycle fast but gave up halfway. Karl spidered down his ladder easily.

In the west cage, May Kovar still had five panthers on their stands waiting to go out. In the east cage, Joseph Walsh was breaking down his pyramid as fast as he could, keeping an eye on all six lions.

Fred Bradna ran back to the center ring, hollering for calm. Ushers and gatemen did the same. "Please keep your seats," they urged. "We know about the fire, we will take care of this."

In escape mobs, psychologists say, the behavior of a few people turns individualistic and antisocial. Lacking guides, others under extreme stress and therefore more suggestible than normal are unable to judge the situation critically and imitate these few, the effect spreading through the crowd in a process the sociologist Gustave Le Bon called a "contagion." Psychologists believe these others succumb to an "impression of universality" and, seeing the rest of the crowd all making for one exit, jettison all reason and pursue the same goals with even more fervor. The larger the crowd, the harder—necessarily—people will fight others to get out. Sociologists refer to this breakdown of societal constraints and the reversion to fight or flee behavior (and other people be damned) as "demoralization."

One reason why people panic and become a mob is a lack of leadership. In the Hartford circus fire, at least early on, Fred Bradna and the ushers and gatemen provided the crowd some exterior direction. Reassured by the voice of authority, many people in the grandstands stayed where they were. As in the Our Lady of the Angels fire in Chicago, in which the nuns told their students to pray rather than flee, people believed in the leadership of these men, and discipline held. This may have been due to the time—the war era, with its voluntary surrender of individual rights for the good of the country as a whole.

The people in the southwest bleachers needed no exterior direction. They bolted away from the flames, running east, toward the performers' entrance. The ones in the low rows had it easy, with nothing in their way— if they ran when they first had the chance. Those who hesitated were buried in the wave coming down from above.

People lost their balance on the narrow boards and fell, taking down

those in front like dominos. Some went through the spaces between the seats, banging their heads on the stringers, getting wedged in between. The next wave stepped on them.

Anna Cote, who'd had the vision of her dead grandfather, said: "I couldn't stand up and walk down the bleachers so I put my hands on the bleacher and slid down to the next one. I remember doing that a couple of times and then my mind goes blank until I get outside." In fact, her sister Iva, already outside, came back in to save her. How she found her in the crowd Anna could only call a miracle.

Some people were still not moving, sitting or standing there entranced, as if none of this was actually happening—a reaction psychologists call "collective disbelief," another way of mentally minimizing or dismissing the danger because it doesn't fit with previous expectations. One survivor remembers sitting in the stands and watching a little girl trip over a rope and fall down, then get up and keep going—all of it far away, disconnected, drained of any urgency.

Above the southwest bleachers the fire suddenly flashed—like the striking of a giant match, some said. Or as one woman described it: "It was as though someone punched a button and a light went on."

The wind took the flames and pushed them up one seam. It streaked up the laces, a spear of fire headed for the top of the westernmost center-pole.

Across Barbour Street, at number 353, a neighbor was sitting on his front porch watching people mill about the grounds when he saw the fire breach the roof of the big top.

Hartford police sergeant Frances Spellman was coming up the midway, just fifty feet from the marquee, when he saw it.

Outside the front door, another policeman was talking to the man in charge of reserved seats. He heard someone yell fire and ran inside, finding circus police chief John Brice. "Yes," Brice said, "it's a fire." The policeman told Chief Hallissey he'd run for a cruiser he'd seen parked on the lot and send the alarm. As he started for Barbour Street, he could see Sergeant Spellman far down the midway, sprinting.

Circus general manager George W. Smith had gone to the yellow ticket wagon to check if the line for reserved seats had broken. He saw people coming out from under the sidewalk and thought an animal had got-

ten loose. He ducked inside the marquee, spied the fire and ran out through the connection to warn the elephant men.

The cruiser parked on the lot was Sergeant Spellman's. Its radio was broken, and he knew it. As he ran toward Barbour Street, he tried to figure out who would have the closest phone. He had a choice of two houses directly ahead of him. And he had a back-up plan. If neither had one, McGurk's or McGovern's would.

Our boys in uniform

The flames blazed up the laces, windblown, shooting to the roof. When the fire reached the top of the westernmost centerpole, it split, forking in three directions—straight across the top and spreading down both sides at the west end, possibly along the seams, following the richest fuel. Now the canvas itself was involved, the paraffin turning to gas and burning.

People were screaming—women, children—and the chairs banged and clashed as the grandstands began to react.

Over the PA, the announcer asked the audience to please leave their seats in an orderly fashion. The power went out, cutting him off.

The track near the front door filled with people. They'd come in that way; it was the only door they knew, and they made for it, running past other, easier exits—typical fire behavior: a reversion to the comfort of the familiar when faced with the strange. Above them, the top was solid flames, making them duck, yet still they surged, bottling up between the bleachers.

Under the marquee, a policeman yelled for the attendants to tear up the iron piping. Chiefs Hallissey and Brice pitched in. "Cut the ropes," the cop ordered, "never mind anything else." Thomas Barber had a jackknife and hacked through the one next to the ticket booth. Paul Beckwith yanked down a set connected to the bleachers, and the people poured through.

At the foot of the grandstands, it wasn't that simple. The crowd coming down piled up at the gates and pressed against the railings. "Fold 'em!" the ushers shouted, trying to jerk the rails out of the ground, but the crowd knocked them back. Gatemen came to their aid, holding the people off as

long as they could. Some succeeded, some failed. They were a handful facing thousands.

Up in their assigned seats, Dr. Paul de la Vergne craned to catch sight of his wife in the crush below. He didn't see her. He should have never let Elizabeth sit by herself. He should have sat down low with her. He took his son's hand and fought his way down.

"Take it easy, take it easy, walk out quietly," the ushers were saying. Some people listened. In school, the children had learned what to do in case of an air raid, and parents pretended this was just another drill.

The Norrises were already gone. The first stampede had taken them away, leaving Mary Kay Smith beneath a pile of chairs. Mrs. Smith and Barbara were busy extricating her. The girl looked up at them, dazed, eyes wide yet not crying. Below, their neighbors were stuck at the gate. For now maybe they would be safer here.

It was a common tactic. Some people needed time to think, needed to know more information in order to assess the situation before acting— a kind of rational paralysis found in all unexpected disasters. Others still didn't consider the situation desperate yet. A man in the south grandstand explained: "I pointed it [the fire] out to my mother, and we discussed what to do with the pregnant woman who sat in front of us with one or more children. Realizing that the tent was held up by three gigantic poles [actually six], I said that we should get out of there. I feared that if the fire got to the top of the tent, the tent would collapse on all of us. The woman in front decided to stay, because she believed that the fire would soon be put out. We always wondered what happened to her."