| Panic Grips Classrooms; Confusion Increases Toll |
| CHICAGO, Dec. 1 (UPI) - Panic aided the flames at Our Lady of the Angels School today. While some children recalled the disciplines of fire drills to make their way to safety, others perished in their confusion. |
| Some pupils jumped from windows; others were pushed. Still others were trampled as they groped for exits. The smaller ones huddled in confusion in corridors. Efforts to get some to move were of little avail. |
| In a few classrooms teachers were able to maintain control. |
| Mrs. Eda Shanahan, one of the nine lay teachers, talked soothingly to her pupils, urging them to wait for firemen and ladders at the open windows of her second floor room. |
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| Meanwhile the Rev. Charles Hunt, (sic) assistant pastor of Our Lady of the Angels Church, and James Raymond, a janitor of the school, managed to get a fire ladder in place on the building outside Mrs. Shanahan's room. Her charges reached the ground safely. |
| Another teacher told how she had persuaded pupils to form a human chain by clutching each other's clothing and leading them to safety. |
| A nun who made three trips into the burning building to rescue children said: |
| “I felt untold strength.” |
| One teacher, who was not identified, told of leading her charges to the head of a stairway and rolling them down to safety when fright immobilized them. |
| Sam Tortorice, the father of a pupil, rushed from his nearby home. Plunging through the smoke, he ran to his daughter's second-floor classroom. One by one he managed to swing six children in the arms of another man leaning from a window on an adjacent wall of an inside ell of the building. Before being driven from the window himself, he managed to pass the sixth child, his daughter. |
| “I just knew where my daughter should be,” he said. |
| What happened? |
| Joseph Brocato, an 11-year-old pupil who was taken to a hospital, told his father. |
| “I was carrying a wastebasket to the boiler room. I saw the janitor running from the boiler room. He shouted, 'Call the Fire Department.' I heard an explosion and there where flames. My classmate and I ran upstairs and we were told by one of the nuns to go to the church. A lot of children were in the church. We were then told to go home.” |
| Mr. Raymond, the school's chief janitor, said that he had been across the street from the school when he saw smoke billowing from the building. He rushed to the school. His attempts to swing a fire escape from the second floor to the ground failed. He broke a window on the ground floor and was cut by flying glass. Then the fire escape suddenly plunged down and struck him on the head. He was treated at a hospital. |
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| Few children were able to provide coherent accounts of what had happened. Mary Brock, 10, said someone told her, “I smell smoke.” |
| “When the door was opened a gust of smoke blew in,” she said. “Sister Mary Clara (sic) Therese said, 'Get out of the window, get on the ledge and stay there.' I got out the window and stood on the ledge. Lots of others jumped.” |
| Mary was rescued by firemen. Her companions who left the ledge were found on the pavement below by the first firemen who arrived. |
| Among those who survived the plunge to the paved yard from a first (sic) floor window was Linda Barleto, 12. |
| “Our backs were burning, then someone pushed me,” Linda said. |
| Linda was taken to a hospital suffering from burns and bruises, but her condition was reported as good. |
| Her cousin, Andrea Gagliareo (sic), also 12, told of opening a classroom window and screaming for help. |
| “Some of the boys jumped out of the window,” she said. “When we looked down we saw them lying still on the ground. We stayed and the firemen saved us.” |
| Across the street from the school Leroy Hewlett, 31, heard the screams. |
| “Kids were hanging from windows, jumping or falling in groups of three and four at at time,” he said. “Smoke and flames poured from the windows.” |
| As fire engines and police cars converged on the scene parents rushed to the school. In the chill wind they strained against police lines and sought to enter the building. |
| Mrs. Pauline Baroni clutched a small red, quilted jacket brought from home to warm her daughter, Karen, 10. |
| “But I can't find. I can't find her,” Mrs. Baroni cried to her friend, Mrs. Mary Sansone. Mrs. Sansone could offer little comfort. She had not been able to find her son, James, 12. |
