HEAVY DEATH TOLL CAUSED BY FIRE IN OLD HOTEL BUILDING
Absence of Exit Light Believed to Have Contributed to Large Loss of Life
FIFTY-ONE men were burned or jumped to death early on September 7 in the most disastrous hotel fire Houston Texas, ever had.
The fire broke out on the second floor of the Gulf Hotel at 12:45 a.m. Within a few minutes the pavement below was littered with bodies as the trapped guests jumped from the second and third floors of the hotel.
The hotel, occupied principally by old men, many of them on relief, was an old three-story structure. The building burned for three hours before rescue squads could enter and begin carrying out the dead and injured.
Fire Started on Second Floor
The manager of the hotel said that a fire at first started on the second floor near his office. He and others doused water on a smouldering mattress. About an hour later the second floor burst into flames.
Choking and blinded by the flame and smoke, the guests ran for the stairs. Cut off by the flames, many tried the fire escape while others, terrified, jumped from the windows.
Sailors and soldiers on leave in Houston came to the aid of the firemen and stretched hose lines and aided in rescue work.
Many of the guests registered at the hotel were defense workers who could not find lodgings and had to take what they could get.
A fire department inspection two weeks before the fire revealed that no red “Exit” light marked the fire escape on the second floor of the hotel. The hotel management was given two weeks to correct this abuse. At the time of the fire this had not been done. Fire department inspectors had planned to reexamine the premises the day after the fire to see whether the light had been installed. The absence of this light is believed to have contributed materially to the heavy death toll.
