“Tumult and wild disorder spread over the circus lot. Dishevelled women, without shoes, with torn stockings, roamed over the grounds calling for their children.”
The first fire alarm went off at 2:44 PM, but it was already too late. Because the canvas roof of the tent had been waterproofed with a mixture of paraffin wax and gasoline, it was extremely flammable. When the fire began, this coating turned the tent into a giant candle, and it melted to the ground before fire trucks even arrived on the scene.
Aerial view of the destroyed big top.
The circus grounds were in chaos. Survivors wandered around in a daze. People were crying and frantically searching for their loved ones. The Hartford Courant reported that “one woman, who was joined by a man, knelt down in prayer. In a few minutes the woman’s two children, faces smudged and clothes torn, came out of the crowd and ran to her arms.”
Alden B. Crandall helped the rescue effort by carrying stretchers away from the tent, all the while keeping an eye out for his missing son. “I went back to my car with my wife and the other kids,” he told the Providence Journal. “They were all crying, and I was too. The darn fool kid was there in the backseat, waiting for us. ‘Daddy,’ and he was bawling. ‘I thought you were dead. I climbed through the bleacher and ran to the car—you always said to go to the car if we were separated.’”
Donald Cook wandered around the circus grounds, looking for his mother, brother, and sister. He couldn’t find them. A couple from Hartford noticed Donald was alone and took him to their home to keep him safe. They gave him something to eat and called the police so his family would know he had survived. Today we might fear the thought of strangers taking a child home with them. But communities were closer then, and many children were cared for by strangers in the aftermath of the disaster.
When Eugene Badger and his father got out of the tent, they were sad to see many people who had been badly burned. “We saw a woman come running out of the tent. She was smoldering,” Eugene recalled. Someone helped the woman extinguish the flames by rolling her on the ground, and then they picked her up and took her to get help.
As the Badgers walked home, Eugene’s mother was riding on the city bus. She had left the Red Cross as soon as she heard about the fire. Amazingly, she spotted her husband and son through the window. She no doubt felt enormous relief when she saw that they were both all right.
Circus performers, while hurrying to haul water and help injured people, were devastated. They felt a special connection to their audiences. They wanted to make people smile and laugh. Instead, their beloved circus had brought tears and pain.
For days after, survivors praised the quick thinking and kindness of the Ringling Bros. workers. “The circus people were wonderful,” Charles Comp told a Hartford Courant reporter. “The band played until the musicians had to jump to safety, the ushers stood at their sections assisting the panic-stricken crowd, and the performers did everything they could.”
Survivor Helen Hathaway also commended the circus performers when she spoke to a reporter at the city’s other major newspaper in the 1940s, the Hartford Times. “They were so calm that they prevented panic by their attitude.”
Photographer Ralph Emerson captured a picture of Emmett Kelly—his clown makeup melted, his tramp costume charred—carrying a bucket of water across the field. It was to become the most famous photograph of the disaster. People would remember July 6, 1944, as “the day the clowns cried.”
Unlike the previous tragic circus fire, all the animals survived the fire in Hartford. Animal handlers yelled, “Tails!” and the elephants lined up, trunk to tail, to be led onto Barbour Street, away from the blaze. Trainers tied up some of the smaller animals to any available post or tree outside the tent. The Boston Globe reported, “The circus animals were comparatively quiet during the fire, which handlers considered especially remarkable inasmuch as many of them had gone through the 1942 circus fire at Cleveland.”
The Wallendas, who had helped many audience members escape the tent, could not find their little daughter, Carla. Panicked, they looked for her everywhere. Helen thought Carla had been watching the show from the audience, and she feared the worst. It turned out Carla had been playing outside the tent with the daughter of another performer when the fire broke out. The two girls had been led away from the tent during the chaos. Finally, police connected with the Wallendas to let them know that Carla was safely in their care.
Emmett Kelly helps during the disaster.
The Flying Wallendas (the little girl is probably Carla).
Firefighters hosing down the burned remains of the big top discovered young Elliot Smith by the animal chutes. He had fallen in the crowd, and as people tripped and fell on top of him, he was crushed beneath the weight of their bodies—but also somewhat protected from the flames. When the firefighters reached Elliot, they carefully lifted him up and carried him to a car that would take him to the hospital.
Donald Gale, another survivor, was found near the center ring, with his chameleon still in his pocket. The chameleon died in the intense heat of the fire, but Donald didn’t. Like Elliot, he was protected by the unfortunate people who had fallen on top of him.
Brothers Guy and Jeff Cummings, fourteen and four years old the time of the fire, lived in a tight-knit community in East Hartford called Hillstown. Most folks there were farmers, and people looked after one another and each other’s kids. “It was an ideal time for kids growing up,” Guy recalled. “There wasn’t really anything to scare you or threaten you.” After the circus fire, five people from their small neighborhood never came home.
With the destruction of the circus, many of the hired hands were out of a job, including the teenager who had run away from home, Robert Segee. At first, Robert hung around because he had no money and no place to go. Then a few days later, word made it to his parents that their son was in Hartford. They sent bus fare, and Robert headed home to Portland, Maine, leaving the circus behind him.
Nicholas Zaccaro and Leo Goodman look at the wreckage of the big top.
It would soon become clear that both the city of Hartford and the Ringling Bros. circus had not done enough to prevent the fire. But because of the war, Hartford was more than prepared to deal with the disaster. Fears of an invasion or bombing by the Germans had caused the city of Hartford, as well as many other cities across the United States, to make plans in case of an emergency. On July 6, auxiliary firefighters, police, and thousands of civilian defense volunteers were thrown into action. Trucks from local businesses were ready to help carry the wounded to hospitals. The Hartford Coca-Cola distributor, for example, sent seven trucks filled with stretchers.
Police officers responded to the first sounding of the fire alarm. They directed traffic away from the scene and kept onlookers from the area. They helped injured people into trucks and ambulances. At headquarters downtown, officers made phone calls to area funeral homes and hospitals to alert them of the victims being brought in.
“We were repairing a meter on the corner of Pearl and Ann Sts., when the fire alarm sounded,” Sergeant Weinstein, Officer Dooley, and Officer Donahue wrote in a witness statement. “We immediately drove to the circus grounds…. At once, we commenced to assist in the removing of the bodies from the afflicted area to a clearing. We then secured a large canvas bag from a nearby circus wagon and into it we placed all the articles we could salvage which might later be used for identification purposes.”
Police officers and nurses were among those at the scene immediately following the fire.
Units from the state national guard, the army, and the navy all came to the aid of the city. The Red Cross had recruited so many volunteer nurses that 150 who had reported for duty were sent home. Countless people from the surrounding neighborhoods and nearby towns helped the rescue efforts in any way they could. The governors of Massachusetts and Vermont also offered aid; they were graciously thanked, but their help was unneeded.
Later, in a radio address, Connecticut Governor Raymond Baldwin mentioned by name and thanked the countless organizations that volunteered their help during the crisis. “We can be intensely proud of the spirit with which the people of Connecticut met the emergency,” said Governor Baldwin. “There are heroes, nameless and innumerable, in this tragedy.”
The Red Cross had collected thousands of pints of blood during the war. Though the East Coast was never attacked, the blood was put to good use helping the hundreds of people who had been injured in the fire. When the supply seemed to be running out, a “request for Type O blood met with one hundred offers in just a few hours.” By the time the crisis was over, the Red Cross had spent $83,159 to help the circus fire victims. This included more than $40,000 collected by the Hartford Times and $16,000 contributed by the Ringling Bros. circus.
One problem the city encountered was communication among police officers and others dealing with the disaster. According to the Hartford Courant, “Telephone service throughout Greater Hartford was disrupted by news of the fire as thousands of residents, office workers, and others near telephones rushed to spread the story or to find out if friends or relatives had escaped the flames.”
There were no telephones on the circus grounds, but members of the Boy Scouts served as messengers between emergency personnel. Officers who needed to call headquarters had to use the phones in nearby homes. Some residents were anxious to help anyone in need. Survivors lined up on the porches of neighboring houses, hoping the owners would be kind enough to let them place a call. Harry Lichtenbaum, age 13, and his married sister, Doris, knocked on the door of a house on Barbour Street and were welcomed in to use the phone. They called their mother, who had no idea what was going on at the circus grounds. “Mom, we’re all right!” Doris said. “Of course you’re all right,” her mother responded. “What do you mean? What has happened? Has something gone wrong?”
Others in the neighborhood saw an opportunity to make a profit. One house charged a quarter a call, and another requested as much as five dollars for people to call home. A woman in a nearby apartment put up a sign in her window saying TELEPHONE. She charged the long line of frightened survivors a dollar each to call their families.
The radio was an important source of information for people anxiously wondering if someone they knew had been caught in the blaze. The comforting but firm voice of the announcer repeatedly told listeners that they should remain calm and that “hysteria will only add to the confusion.” Those with missing family members were urged to call the Connecticut War Council at phone number “Hartford 7-0181,” where someone would take down their information and help them locate their loved ones.
There were three places people could look. Lost children had been rounded up by the police and led to the Brown School on Market Street. There, Officer Ella Brown and others played with the children on the playground and fed them cookies and lemonade. It was after midnight by the time all the children had finally been claimed by relatives or friends. Many of the kids didn’t realize how devastating the disaster had been.
The next place to look was one of the local hospitals. The largest number of injured people were taken to Municipal Hospital because it was closest to the circus grounds. Other patients were sent to St. Francis Hospital or Hartford Hospital, some distance away.
A girl is reunited with a family member at the Brown School.
The last place anyone wanted to look for family was at the State Armory on Broad Street. This huge stone building housed weapons and ammunition and served as a training ground for soldiers preparing to leave for the war. On July 6, it became a morgue. There were more deaths than the hospitals could handle, so the bodies of people who had died were brought to the armory. There, people were let in to try to identify their kin among the rows of bodies laid out on cots.
In all, 167 people died, and 487 people were hospitalized. Of those who perished, 59 were children under 10 years old.