1941 — Feb 7, Fire, Salvation Army Homeless Shelter/Lodging, N. Akard St., Dallas, TX–13
Compiled by Wayne Blanchard; last edit 9-29-2024 for upload to: http://www.usdeadlyevents.com/
— 13 National Fire Protect. Assoc. Spreadsheet on Large Loss of Life Fires (as of Feb 2003).[1]
— 13 San Antonio Express, TX. “Fire Toll 13.” 2-14-1941, p. 5.
Narrative Information
Feb 7: “Dallas, Tex., Feb. 7. – AP – Five unidentified transients were burned fatally, six were near death and at least 20 others injured severely in a fire that swept through a Salvation Army second-story hotel here tonight. Between 25 and 30 nude men were trapped in the rear of the blazing building, the men’s lodge and mission at 313½ North Akard street. The fire started in a small front room in which all the clothing of the sleeping men had been piled….
“Two of those trapped in the rear were cripples and could not escape. Several of those who jumped from rear windows were taken to hospitals with broken legs and serious burns….Every available ambulance in the city was pressed into service.
“William George Gilks, divisional Salvation Army commander, said 50 men were lodged in the hotel….
“One man hung out of the window and screamed for help but wouldn’t jump. Finally he was overcome and just collapsed over the window frame.
“Fire Chief L. M. Funk said the fire was caused by ‘improper use of inflammable[2] chemical and natural gas.’ ‘Indications are that the fire originated in the delousing room where clothing of the men was sterilized,’ Chief Funk said. ‘With a small open gas stove the clothes were heated until the bugs dropped off onto the floor where a chemical killed them. The chemical was inflammable. It was a misuse of gas. We do not know what the chemical was but we are going to have an analysis made of it’.” (Galveston Daily News, TX. “Five Men Burn to Death as Fire Hits Dallas Hotel. Many Others Hurt in Salvation Army Transients’ House.” 2-8-1941, p. 1.)
Feb 8: “Dallas, Feb. 8. – (AP) – Eight men, mostly homeless wanderers, died and more than a score were scared and injured trying to escape a roaring wall or flames which trapped them in a second-floor Salvation Army lodging in downtown Dallas early today. Another 25 panic-stricken transients fought their way through the inferno to safety, some braving flame through a window. Many were forced out into freezing weather unclothed.
“Salvation Army officials, headed by Major Ernest Pickering, pored over half-burned records trying to identify the dead….
“Some of the burned and injured were not expected to survive. Baylor University Hospital, a pioneer in the use of a blood bank, supplied plasma (the dried elements of blood) for numerous fast transfusions to the dying and injured.
“The fire started about 11:10 last night in a small cabinet-like room at the front of the second-floor lodging. This room was piled with clothing around a stove used to delouse the garments. Outside, on benches, naked men sat waiting for their clothes.
“Brig. Gen. William George Gilks, Salvation Army divisional commander in Texas, said the door to the room must have been opened when the nude men saw smoke curling from the delousing room. When they made their apparent effort to retrieve their clothes, he said, the draft spread the flames.
“The spreading flames, flushing across the tar-papered ceiling, threw the men into a panic. Those who were dressed dashed to the stairway, the only exit, which is at the front and side of the room. They made it to safety. Others, nude or wrapped only in sheets or blankets, flung themselves through the flames and tore down the stairway. Doom lay in wait for the others. Thinking there was a rear exit, they rushed to the back of the building, but found only two windows between the flames and safety….
“Upstairs eight men were sprawled, two through the window, others stacked within a few feet. Evidently overcome or burned to death as they struggled to get through. Fireman Kelsic Allen said some of the eight lying there were old men, and that nearly all were naked. Under their bodies lay blankets of the type used by the army in 1917….” (Denton Record-Chronicle, TX. “Eight Men Burn to Death When Fire Destroys Abode for Homeless in Dallas.” 2-8-1941, p. 1.)
Feb 8: “Dallas, Feb. 8. (AP) — Nine men and a boy perished today in a mauling, screaming crowd of homeless transients trapped by fire in a second-floor Salvation Army hotel. About 18 others who fought their way out of the inferno after flames had blocked the only stairway were in hospitals, at least five of them seriously burned or injured. The death toll was expected to grow.
“An emergency call for blood donors went out from Baylor University Hospital’s blood bank after the equivalent of 196 transfusions had been administered the injured and dying. Salvation Army officials and employes immediately volunteered their blood.
“A story of heroics and pandemonium was related by one transient, who broke both legs in plunging from a window 35 feet to the ground….He told of what happened, pain from his shattered limbs halting him occasionally:
“About 11 p.m. last night about 55 men were lying in the row of cots which stretched to the rear of the big room. At the front sat several naked men, waiting for their clothes to come out of a small cabinet-like room called a “delouser.” In the delouser a gas fire burned, heating the clothes hung around it. Smoke curled from around the door of the tiny room and someone ran in to grab the clothes. The flames roared out, flashing across the tar-papered ceiling. The witness said he leaped from his cot, quickly tied two blankets together and reached for a third held by a neighbor. ‘He wouldn’t turn loose, so I slugged him and took it away.’’ He said he tied the third blanket to the others and rushed to a window at the rear of the room, pushing through a plunging mass of men making for the smoke-filled stairway. He anchored the tied blankets to a cot, smashed the window with a shovel and flung the make-shift rope through it. The windows open on an enclosed courtyard.
“The crowd of men at the stairway entrance turned back, unable to stand the wall of flame barring then way. Some got through, burned and blackened. The others made a rush for the rear window. One man, the witness said, was literally shoved out, dropping in a heap 35 feet below. The witness himself was shoved, toppling out the window but grasping the blanket rope before a body hurtled down on top of him. Men poured through the window until there was a pile… below. The press at the window grew and when firemen went in they found eight men, some dead, lying in and near it.
“Identification of the dead, made difficult because admittance records were destroyed or mutilated, gave this list of men who perished:
Julius Benson. 41, Little Rock, Ark.;[3]
an unidentified boy;
John B. Murberger, Dallas;
William H. Nugent, New York City;
James Edward White, who gave his address as 9 Main Street, Tulsa;
Gus Halb, St. Louis;
Oscar Lindley, Desdemona, Tex.;
Thomas Cook and
- M. Jenkins, addresses unknown.
The tenth man was not identified.
“Lindley, before he died, said he had a wife and a child living in Amarillo…” (Midland Reporter-Telegram, TX. “Ten Transients Burn to Death in Salvation Army Hotel. Inferno Spreads Swiftly and Entraps Many Homeless on Building’s Second Floor…Eighteen Leap to Safety.” 2-9-1941, p. 1.)
Feb 13: “Dallas, Feb. 13. – (AP) – The 12th victim of the disastrous fire that swept the Salvation Army transient hotel last Friday night was Harry Brady, 56, of Dallas, succumbed today.” (Denton Record-Chronicle, TX. “12th Victim of Dallas Fire Succumbs.” 2-13-1941, p. 4.)
Feb 14: “Dallas, Tex., Feb. 13. – The toll in Dallas’ Salvation Army transient hotel fire of last Friday reached 13 today with the deaths of Harry Brady of Dallas and Leroy Jones, 50, of Bridgeport, Ill.” (San Antonio Express, TX. “Fire Toll 13.” 2-14-1941, p. 5.)
Sources
Denton Record-Chronicle, TX. “12th Victim of Dallas Fire Succumbs.” 2-13-1941, p. 4. At: http://newspaperarchive.com/fullpagepdfviewer?img=68419771&sterm=fire+salvation+army
Denton Record-Chronicle, TX. “Eight Men Burn to Death When Fire Destroys Abode for Homeless in Dallas.” 2-8-1941, p. 1. Accessed 4-18-2013 at: http://newspaperarchive.com/fullpagepdfviewer?img=79813737&sterm=fire+salvation+army
Galveston Daily News, TX. “Five Men Burn to Death as Fire Hits Dallas Hotel.” 2-8-1941, p.1. http://newspaperarchive.com/fullpagepdfviewer?img=45246651&sterm
Midland Reporter-Telegram, TX. “Ten Transients Burn to Death in Salvation Army Hotel.” 2-9-1941, p. 1. At: http://newspaperarchive.com/fullpagepdfviewer?img=153508556&sterm
National Fire Protection Association. Spreadsheet on Large Loss of Life Fires (as of Feb 2003). (Email attachment to B. W. Blanchard from Jacob Ratliff, NFPA Archivist/Taxonomy Librarian, 7-8-2013.)
San Antonio Express, TX. “Fire Toll 13.” 2-14-1941, p. 5. Accessed 4-18-2013 at: http://newspaperarchive.com/fullpagepdfviewer?img=70678146&sterm=fire+salvation+army
[1] Has the date incorrectly as Feb 8.
[2] Flammable in today’s usage.
[3] “Services for Julius Benson, 41, night watchman who rescued three men from the blazing inferno here late Friday night before he collapsed, will be held at 2 p.m. tomorrow.” (San Antonio Express, TX. “Mass Funeral Set in Victims of Fire.” 2-10-1941, p. A2.)