CATASTROPHE: Old People’s Home

The slow, soft breathing of 250 infirm old men and women asleep one night last week in the Pittsburgh dormitories of the Little Sisters of the Poor suddenly broke off into gags, coughs, smoke-stifled cries. Fire billowed up through the peaked roof of the Catholic home. Its glare lighted wrinkled faces twisted with fear and despair. Crippled old men thumped their canes on the floor for help. Aged women forgot their slippers and wrappers as the black-robed nuns herded them into a crawling, shuffling line down the rickety fire escapes. Querulous prayers rose in the darkness to blend with hysterical shrieks. With smoke and fire swirling about her, Mother Superior Agatha directed the exit, kept it from becoming a panic-driven stampede.

Firemen had to batter down bolted gates before they could get into the yard, put up their ladders, fight the flames. On the dark lawn were laid the dead and dying, with priests moving up and down administering the last sacrament. The dead: 40. Injured: 175.