Canada: NEWFOUNDLAND: Daybreak In St. John’s

At 6:30 one morning last week Isaac Hull, fisherman turned boardinghouse keeper, was up & about. It was bitter cold (6°), and he needed an early start at his fire-making. His Hull Home, in downtown St. John’s, was jampacked with 70 boarders, most of them government-supported poor, aged or infirm, awaiting admission to public institutions. Proprietor Hull lit the kitchen oil range, then bustled next door to light another in the annex. By the time he was ready to leave the annex, the 15-year-old main building, where he had started the first fire, was doomed. Flames, apparently spread by an explosion in the kitchen range, licked over the varnished woodwork and blocked the hallways.

On the third floor, Boarder Alice Conners smelled smoke, woke as many as she could. One aged man and two aged women abandoned hope of rescue, plunged from the third-story windows to death on the sidewalks. Firemen came in time to snatch six through windows and down the ladders before the gale-whipped flames enshrouded the building. The ailing, the infirm and the bedridden in Isaac Hull’s boardinghouse had no chance.

An hour later, the ice-shrouded, gutted building had cooled. Inside, firemen found charred bodies, some of them piled near windows, others still in bed. In all, 33 had died. It was the worst fire in Newfoundland since the K. of C. Hostel blaze claimed 100 in 1942. Two years after the Fire Department and City Council had recommended fire escapes for Hull Home, the city began an inquiry to find out why they had never been installed.