Reading about the Winecoff Hotel fire is pure agony. And if the distress of reading this account of America's worst hotel fire makes firefighters think about safety, then the authors have accomplished a unique feat.
It's common for us to plan for the worst when we check into hotels. We walk the halls and open the stairwell door. We plan, but have the luxury of knowing that fire suppression systems and code enforcement make safety as inevit-able as a night's sleep. This book, however, is so unsettling you may opt for a low floor on your next hotel stay.
When the fire broke out in the Atlanta, GA, hotel on Dec. 7, 1946, a single open stairwell let fire consume the 15-story structure, resulting in the deaths of 119 people. Firefighters wrestled their way through a dozen floors of fire before bringing it under control. Was it arson? Could more lives have been saved? Why did so many jump to their deaths? These questions are answered in this account by reporter Sam Heys and researcher Allen B. Goodwin.
Fire struck the third-floor just after 3 A.M. Packed with Christmas shoppers and teenagers attending a convention, the Winecoff boasted "fireproof" construction. But there were no sprinklers or fire escapes. Wood doors burned through and trapped most occupants in their rooms. Aerial ladders reached only a few dozen residents.
This book grabs the reader in the first pages. It roughs you up with one nagging question. Confronted with the choice of jumping or burning to death, which would you choose?
As firefighters stretch lines up the narrow staircase, readers step into the rooms of the dead and dying. You meet the ex-Marine who survived Guadal-canal only to suffocate in a 14th-floor room. Is Bill Cahill successful as he carries his mother across a painter's scaffold six floors above the street? One couple inches their way along the top-floor ledge, hoping to outrun the flames. Do they make it?
The Winecoff Fire is crafted like a scary whodunit. It reaches an emotional peak early and makes your stomach rumble with a "you are there" scenario. You dread turning the page, wondering whether the guest will live or die. Some of the most gro-tesque news photos ever taken a girl plummeting to her death and a woman resting on her dead arm at a window are included.
The only problem with the book is that even though it's a fire story, firefighters are not the prominent characters. They make daring rescues and pick people off window ledges, but they're not the authors' focus. They seem like reactive understudies in a drama where the hotel guests are the primary players. That's a problem because even though the chronicle of death is so captivating, it wears thin. You need to step out of the victims' shoes, pull on the boots and learn what it was like to fight this blaze.
The Winecoff Fire holds a special lesson for firefighters because it reveals the emotions of victims in such personal detail. Do we really understand what it's like to be victim instead of victor? And with the modern tragedies of Dupont Plaza and the MGM Grand in recent memory, it asks whether hotels are really as safe as we think.
Joseph Louderback, a Firehouse® contributing editor, is a member of the Milmont Fire Company in Milmont Park, PA.
