Talk:Iroquois Theatre fire/Archive 1

Separate articles

I think "Iroquois Theater" in Chicago Illinois should be a separate article from the Iroquois Theater Fire article. რɫՒ◌§ 9¤ ॐ (talk) 04:10, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Temperature

"the influx of near-zero Chicago chilled winter air fueled a huge fireball"

I suppose that's near zero degrees Fahrenheit? It really needs to say, and provide a Celsius conversion if so, because 0° invites one to think of the temperature water freezes at if you're a metric thinker. Is the fact that the air was so cold relevant to the creation of the fireball? (I have no idea). —Felix the Cassowary 20:17, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Maybe it would be better to say ""the influx of frigid Chicago winter air fueled a huge fireball" and avoid a silly-looking conversion. Maybe leave out the "Chicago" too. --CliffC (talk) 20:54, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Rewriting and moving

I'm rewriting this (just started) to improve the narrative flow, to give an idea of what the Iroquois Theatre (note spelling!) was like before it burned, and to add more information from both the Brandt and Hatch books on the fire. One thing I've just noticed is that this article is called "Iroquois Theater Fire." The building was not called the Iroquois Theater at any time in its existence: it was called the Iroquois Theatre, r e not e r. (Buildings that hold live theatrical performances are generally called "theatres" in the United States, while movie houses are theaters.) I think it's simply factually inaccurate to have the article under "er" when the actual building was never called that, so I suggest that this article should be moved. Please vote below on this: we'll move or not once consensus exists. --NellieBly (talk) 05:03, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

While editing this I've also found some discrepancies between what the references say and what is written here, especially with respect to the asbestos curtain. According to both references I have here, the curtain snagged on a reflector, not on the acrobat's line, and one of the references states that the curtain didn't go missing at all - in fact, it was tested and shown not to contain enough asbestos to be fireproof (the reference comes complete with quote from a chemist). Neither says anything about the curtain operator being sick or in hospital or even that there was a curtain operator - one reference implies that nobody was actually ever in charge of the curtain. Worse, the article stated that all exits opened inwards, and that this was common. In reality, some of the exits are shown in photos in these books to have opened outwards; the real problem was that the exits were badly marked (or not marked at all), badly located, inadequate in number, attached to flimsy fire escapes, difficult to reach, and often only accessible by illogical stairways that merged to cause bottlenecks. Some were blocked off by gates; others led to dead ends; some windows looked so much like exits that patrons rushed toward them only to be trapped when they couldn't be opened. In other words, the problem was much more complex than a simple "the exits opened inwards". --NellieBly (talk) 07:34, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Name of article

Should the name of this article be Iroquois Theater Fire or Iroquois Theatre Fire? Presently, the article title uses Theater, but all references throughout the article are to the Theatre. Does anyone know which is the proper spelling? The title and the article contents should be consistent. Thanks. (64.252.33.75 (talk) 14:12, 30 December 2009 (UTC))

"Theatre" is factually accurate, according to playbills printed at the time and the three books about the fire that I've read. Traditionally, in the US the spelling "theatre" is used for stages and "theater" for movie houses. I asked last month (look above) for comment on moving the page; since I haven't seen anyone complain I'm moving it now. --NellieBly (talk) 06:11, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

I've asked for a reverse redirect using {{db-move}}. --NellieBly (talk) 06:22, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Incomplete fire escapes?

I have read several accounts stating that the theatre's fire escapes were incomplete. However, a photograph of the alley behind the theatre clearly shows a complete fire escape extending all the way to the ground. From the accounts I've read, I think perhaps the problem was that the fire escape was poorly designed, with exits opening onto it at several levels. This made the escape unusable because of flames coming through doors lower down.

There was apparently a single firefighting standpipe on the stage, but it's unclear whether it had a hose connected. If it did, no one thought or knew how to use it.

The fireball also melted the fuses in the Theatre's lighting system, which left the interior in total darkness except for the light from the fire. One outcome was the requirement for lighted exit signs.RogerInPDX (talk) 17:05, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Treatment of the injured

I'm unsure if this should be part of the article, but news of the disaster spread across the city very quickly, causing doctors, nurses, and medical students to rush to the theatre. An emergency "field hospital" was set up next door in Thompson's Restaurant. Injuries were treated, and some unconscious victims revived, though many of them died later.RogerInPDX (talk) 17:13, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

No telephones?

Surely the most modern theatre in the country would have had a telephone, and in fact probably several. What we don't know is where they were located, and whether theatre staff were allowed to use them, or had been told they could be used to call for help in an emergency.RogerInPDX (talk) 18:23, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

An old question but worth addressing. Chicago's Awful Theater Horror (CATH) and Tinder Box both mention phones. First, the question of how the alarm actually got "called in." It is known that the first alarm was delivered by a stagehand sent to run to the nearest fire station. From the stage exits that is a run of about 500 feet (150 m). So either there was a delay in deciding to send the stagehand out, or nobody knew where the firehouse was. This is called a "still alarm" in Chicago, as opposed to a "box alarm," because the fire alarm box is "still" or quiet. (A 911 call is a still alarm, so the vast majority of alarms today are still.)

The theater's engineer said in CATH there was no telephone backstage. He said that if there was a fire somebody would have to run to a fire alarm box or a telephone. To prevent false alarms, fire alarm boxes were locked, but business owners and policemen had keys. Even in the 1900s, the box was wired to the firehouse assigned to it (and to City Hall). Bells indicated which alarm was triggered and the assigned firemen would respond. The boxes can be used to call for backup, hence "two alarm fire," "three alarm fire," etc.

We also know there were public phones in the area. Tinder Box mentions that a reporter paid a business owner for exclusive use of a phone and hired local boys to stick sewing pins into all the phones nearby. Not sure to what extent it worked, but the idea was that he wanted an exclusive on the story and wanted to stop other reporters from calling their editors. But there's no evidence the phones were used to call for help.

Finally, it's not certain that the Iroquois actually had a phone at all. The Chicago Tribune archives have prominent ads from local theaters. Many ads include a phone number, but the Iroquois does not. Of course, they may have just chosen not to advertise it. Roches (talk) 16:24, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

Changes to the article

I added some things after reading Hatch 2003.

• The article stated that a man who had a bascule lock at home opened one of the exit doors and that two others were opened by force. The person who had a similar lock (on his ice box) was Frank Houseman, a bar owner who pitched (and lost) in a single game with the Baltimore Orioles. His statement, quoted in Hatch, credits his ball-player friend Charlie Dexter with opening one of the other doors. Both athletes were seated in one of the boxes.

• The floor plan of the theater's lower floor is reproduced in Hatch. It shows only three doors on the north side of the theater, which means that according to Hatch, Brandt and the article, all of the fire exits of the orchestra seating area were opened. Should the article say that?

• I added more about the stairways to the section "The Theater". Although that section does not deal with the fire, it does deal with the structure of the theater. It is a bit long, but the design of the stairways is a major reason why so many people died. So I included:

• The rationale for the common stairway: "see and be seen" (a souvenir booklet, quoted in Hatch). Everyone got to experience the splendor of the foyer equally. And everyone got to use the same stairway to get to the balcony level, so if you met someone you knew, you wouldn't know how much they had paid for their ticket. The Gilded Age faux-classlessness of this is patently absurd, but somebody actually said that to a reporter an hour or so before the fire.
• The requirement for separate stairways. Like a lot of aspects of this disaster, the laws were on the books but weren't enforced. I tried to explain why this was important without specifically referring to the fire.

• Added numbers of seats to the description of the three levels. There were also "standing room" tickets.

• Ticket prices ranged from 35¢ to over $1; measuringworth.com gives $191 in 2014 US dollars for $1, using production workers' wages, which is probably the best way to determine the value of a theater ticket. But choosing that method is arbitrary and possibly OR, so I didn't add it.
• The fire section said there were 1700 seats. I removed the reference, thinking Hatch 2003 was more reliable than the periodical.
• Hatch says approximately 1,840 people were in the theater, with 200 in standing room. The article says more, and I didn't want to reduce it.

• I changed the part about the fire inspector's visit. It no longer says "no extinguishers" and no longer mentions Kilfyre. It goes directly to the fact that the report was suppressed for political reasons. Then I added a point about the Kilfyre tubes.

• Kilfyre is a brand name for what was evidently the original baking-soda-in-a-tube device. There were other brands. Sources invariably use the word as a noun, as if it is the name of the powder (tubes of Kilfyre); it should be an adjective, but I left it. It's necessary to say that it didn't work, and I stated why as well.

That's all for now but I may make more changes. Roches (talk) 18:04, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

Bodies were moved?

The lede notes that the number of dead may not be accurate because "not all the deaths were reported, as some of the bodies were removed from the scene." There's never any further explanation of that statement. Does anyone have further information on this? ChiHistoryeditor (talk) 16:49, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

Problems with "Why the Iroquois was dangerous"

• This section heading is not NPOV. It assumes that the theater was dangerous before the reader has a chance to learn whether it was indeed dangerous. The heading also suggests that the section is only intended to say why the Iroquois was dangerous, not to discuss whether it was dangerous. We cannot make judgements like that. It's also a WP:SYN problem for that reason - we are giving our conclusion that it was dangerous. No matter how true it is, such conclusions need to come from RS, not us.
• The statement regarding asbestos, "Although it is now known to cause cancer," is distracting and irrelevant to this article.
• Much of the section is more of a post mortem, and it belongs in the aftermath section.

Of these problems, the section heading is the most serious IMO. We cannot judge or declare things to be dangerous. I am changing that now and removing the cancer statement. I'll do some shuffling of the before & after content too. All of this material needs to be in this article. It just needs to be put together in a more logical order. Dcs002 (talk) 02:01, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

Done. Roches, you should know that I rearranged a lot of your recent contributions to this article, as described above. I think this is a better way to present the content you brought to the article, but I didn't smooth out the transitions at all. I just did the basic reshuffle and rewrite the headings. The content is all still there (except the cancer thing), but you might want to look it over and see how it works for you. Dcs002 (talk) 02:36, 24 October 2015 (UTC)