A class at Our Lady of the Angels school. 1956.
Greetings ~
I've been writing blogs for around ten years. I have a long list of blogs on the web. I write about a host of topics and fires and disasters are a lot of my blog interests. I have written about fires before, The Coconut Grove, The Hartford Circus Fire, The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, even fires aboard ships and the Collinwood School Fire of 1908. But this blog bothered me as the pictures are so vivid as to the death and injuries of this fire.
The Our Lady of the Angels School Fire on December 1, 1958 was a terrible event. Only another 40-minutes and the students would have been on their way home from school for the day. Christmas was around the corner. No doubt many of the student were thinking about Christmas parties, big meals and the gifts that they would be getting. However, fate had another idea. There would be no Christmas this year for many Chicago families. And future Christmases would never, ever be the same.
Over 90 children and three nuns would die on December 1st. Another school fire would take place and more children would die largely because of safety features that were never installed in the aging school building.
This blog is dedicated to those children and three heroic nuns who tried in vain to save their students and they, themselves perished. Today we have school shootings. Back then we had school fires. Children just keep on dying.
WARNING:
This blog contains historic photographs of this fire event which include scenes of injured and dead children. These have to be shown to layout the magnitude of this terrible fire. Viewer discretion is advised.