TWO KILLED, 15 INJURED IN PIONEER HOTEL BLAZE
Guests Plunge From Windows
At least two deaths were verified and more than 15 injuries were reported in fire that swept through the 41-year-old Pioneer International Hotel early this morning. It was feared the death toll would be much higher.
Reporters on the scene said that four bodies were brought to the mezzanine level about 2 a.m. and the firemen had called for a resuscitator on the ninth floor. Several other sheet-fraped bodies were seen there. The fire broke out shortly after midnight.
Robert Trooper, hotel auditor, said he got a call from a guest who said she saw flames in the stairwell on the third floor.
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An unidentified room clerk said the flames shot up the elevator shaft of the 250-room hotel, leaving a wake of smoke in the upper floors of the 11-story building.
At 1:45 a.m. St. Mary's Hospital had reported one person dead on arrival and 15 others injured. At that time it was not known whether any injured had been taken to other hospitals.
Those injured included person who jumped from the upper floors.
One witness said, "People were jumping from the windows and splattering on the sidewalk. It was awful. Firemen were screaming to people through their horns to stay on the floors for oxygen."
Witnesses said they saw bodies illuminated by floodlights, leaping from the rooms of the 10th floor and the roof.
Mrs. Lee Atkinson, who had just left the hotel when the fire broke out, said she heard young people screaming. "I wanted to go back in and help them. It was awful," she said.
"I'll never forget this as long as I live. People hanging on the ledges, yelling."
At 1:15 a.m. a man named "Bill" found his way to a balcony on the eighth floor overhanging Pennington Street. A friend on the street below, who had found his way out of the hotel, called to him to remain where he was, that he was safe where he was.
"Bill" disappeared and reappeared at another window on the east side of the hotel. A sheet rope from the floor above him dropped past the window. He grabbed at it and slid down to the fourth floor of an addition to the building. The dead person was later identified as a woman who jumped from the seventh floor, struck a balcony overlooking Stone Avenue and fell to the sidewalk. Her name was not available.
Firemen pleaded with hotel guests not to jump from the building. At first the message was given in English by Capt. Ellis Franklin. Later, an unidentified fireman spoke to the guests in Spanish.
With flames still out of control at 1:55 a.m. the fire department issued a "Yellow Alert" putting all emergency equipment in the city into action. "This is like a disaster situation," the department spokesman said.
Edwin Santschi, retired electrical inspector for the City of Chicago, said flames were biting through the door of his room on the fifth floor. He said he tried to douse the flames with water from an ice bucket. In the hallway he said he saw four other guests crowding at the window "ready to jump."
Father Cahelare, of St. Augustine Cathedral, arrived at the scene soon after midnight. He was seen giving the last rites to a guest on the second floor of the hotel.
Several hundred employes of the Hughes Aircraft Co. were at the company annual party. Some left, and others sped through the building leading guests, most of them elderly people, to safety.
"Many were doing brave things," a witness said.
One man stood on a window ledge on the fourth floor for 15 or 20 minutes before firemen could get a ladder to him.
Note: By the following day, headlines told readers that the fire had resulted in 28 dead and at least 35 injured. Eventually 29 deaths were attributed to the fire. Among those killed were Mr. and Mrs. Harold Steinfeld, permanent residents on the top floor of the hotel. The hotel had been built by Albert Steinfeld, Harold's father, in 1929. The family was best known for Steinfeld's department store.
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