Corinne Anderson (left), Casey Grant, and Sue Marsh are gathering Cocoanut Grove artifacts at the National Fire Protection Association.
The fire began in the nightclub’s basement Melody Lounge and swept upstairs into the main dining room, where a fireball shot through the packed space and into a cocktail lounge opened only days earlier. Hundreds banged helplessly on locked exits and piled up inside a jammed revolving door.
Comments
*******Whenever the Coconut Grove came up my mother would tell us about her brother. He was a BC graduate and attended all the football games. He had talked, over dinner of, going to the Coconut Grove because he was sure BC would win. Because they lost, he did not go. I think it was the only time the family was happy with a BC loss. Uncle Bill was alive to tell about it.*****
Sadly, each US generation seems to relearn the lessons of the Coconut Grove fire (see: Our Lady of Angels, 1958; Southgate, Kentucky nightclub, 1977; Happy Land nightclub, 1990; Station nightclub) but the victims did not die in vain, since the changes to the building code that arose in its aftermath have saved countless lives, and continue to do so every day. / / Life Safety codes are written in blood, and need to be respected, to both save lives, and as a commemoration to those who died.
I thought that in recent years it had been concluded that the fire started due a gas leak in a fixture in the basement ceiling, sparked by a match struck by an employee.