NFPA Journal - November/December 2012 - (Page 47)

The New Broadway Lounge at the Cocoanut Grove nightclub. Facing page, the lounge after being destroyed by the fire that killed 492. exits would be. In fact, some of the exit doors were locked; another had been concealed and locked; and other doors that led to exits opened inward, creating immediate pileups. The club’s main entrance/exit was a revolving door where many people made their escape—until it was overwhelmed by the crush of people and jammed, trapping everyone behind it. Others, the fortunate who were not trampled, incinerated, or overcome by the thick, acrid smoke, found alternate ways out, like the basement window that led to a small courtyard. The fire’s duration may have been brief, but the outcome was catastrophic: Cocoanut Grove would claim 492 lives—200 perished within feet of the jammed revolving doors—making it the deadliest fire in New England history. It remains the nation’s deadliest nightclub fire, and in the broader category of public assembly and nightclub fires it is surpassed only by the Iroquois Theater fire in Chicago in 1903, which killed 602. Unlike some earlier landmark fires, like the Triangle Waist Co. fire in New York in 1911, Cocoanut Grove did not result in significant changes to NFPA codes; the Building Exits Code, the precursor to NFPA 101®, Life Safety Code®, already addressed the types of hazards present at the club. Local fire and safety codes, however, in Boston and in municipalities throughout the country, underwent sweeping changes, including the reclassification of nightclubs and restaurants as places of public assembly, which is how they were already regarded in the Building Exits Code. The change introduced more stringent re- quirements for exits, emergency lighting, occupancy capacities, and other safety features. The issue of code enforcement came under intense scrutiny following Cocoanut Grove, and Boston was found especially lacking. In a newspaper story two days after the fire, Robert S. Moulton, technical secretary of NFPA and author of the association’s report on the blaze, described the “chaotic condition” of the city’s building laws, which he maintained were subject to “incompetent enforcement, political influence, and careless management.” The calamity of Cocoanut Grove, he went on to say, “is clearly due to gross violation of several fundamental principles of fire safety, which have been demonstrated by years of experience in other fires, and which should be known to everybody.” Underscoring Moulton’s assessment was a fire-safety inspection of Cocoanut Grove, conducted by the city eight days before the fire, that pronounced the club’s condition “good”: There were an adequate number of exits, the inspection found, and the interior decorations were not combustible. In 1943, club owner Barnett Welansky was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the deaths of 19 Cocoanut Grove patrons and sentenced to 12–15 years in prison; ill with cancer, he was pardoned in 1946 and died two months after his release. The trial included much discussion of the factors that could have produced such a violent fire, but a conclusive explanation was never produced. The official cause of the fire in Boston Fire Department records is listed as “unknown.” —Scott Sutherland request, and it wasn’t long before Marsh connected the dots. Could this be the issue Hanafin was looking for? Marsh flipped through the fragile pages, and there as part of the issue’s center spread was the photo Hanafin had described: her father as a dark-haired boy, his eyes downcast, and a man standing at the bottom of the church steps, reaching out to touch the boy’s cheek following the funeral for Mary Zenkin. Marsh immediately emailed Hanafin. “Good news! I have found a copy of the Boston Evening American with the photograph,” she wrote. The photo was digitized, added to the coalition’s collection, and a copy was sent to Hanafin. The original newsprint was stored in NFPA’s climatecontrolled archive. Finding the photo “is what this coalition is all about,” says Marsh, who has organized the Cocoanut Grove Coalition and serves as its project manager. “Our goal is to capture, in one place, all that we can so that more items don’t go missing or get destroyed—we need to document and preserve what’s out there. I’d like the new website to be the go-to place for the Cocoanut Grove Fire, a place for families and loved ones to tell their stories or find stories they didn’t know about.” Historical significance The decades that have passed since Cocoanut Grove have not diminished Photograph: Corbis NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2012 NFPA JOURNAL 47

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of NFPA Journal - November/December 2012

NFPA Journal - November/December 2012
Contents
First Word
In a Flash
Perspectives
Firewatch
Research
Heads Up
Structural Ops
In Compliance
Buzzwords
Outreach
Electrical Safety
Wildfire Watch
Past + Present
Easy Being Green?
Pressure Points
2011 Large-Loss Fires
2011 Firefighter Injuries
Section Spotlight
What’s Hot
Looking Back

NFPA Journal - November/December 2012