On Monday, December 1, 1958, a fire broke out at Our Lady of the Angels School in Chicago, Illinois, shortly before classes were to be dismissed for the day.

A total of 92 pupils and three nuns ultimately died when smoke, heat, fire, and toxic gases cut off their normal means of egress through corridors and stairways.

[3] The neighborhood had originally been heavily Irish-American, but gradually developed in the first half of the twentieth century into a largely Italian-American middle-class community.

[4] The school was one of several buildings associated with the large Catholic parish; others included a church, a rectory, which was adjacent to the church, a convent of the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which was across Iowa Street from the school, and two buildings one block east on Hamlin Avenue referred to by the parish as Joseph Hall and Mary Hall respectively, which housed kindergarten and first-grade classes.

However, its interior was made almost entirely of combustible wooden materials—stairs, walls, floors, doors, roof, and cellulose fiber ceiling tiles.

The single fire escape was near one end of the north wing, but reaching it required passing through the main corridor, which in this case rapidly became filled with suffocating smoke and superheated gases.

The fire smoldered undetected for approximately 20 minutes, gradually heating the stairwell and filling it with a light gray smoke that later would become thick and black, as other combustibles became involved.

When she opened the front door of the classroom moments later to enter the hallway, the intensity of the smoke caused O'Neill to deem it too dangerous to attempt escape down the stairs leading to Avers Avenue on the west side of the building.

The wooden staircase burst into flames and, acting like a chimney, sent hot gases, fire, and very thick, black smoke swirling up the stairwell.

After instructing two boys who were emptying trash baskets in the boiler room to leave the area, Raymond rushed to the rectory and asked the housekeeper to call the fire department.

Glowacki had noticed flames in the northeast stairwell after a passing motorist, Elmer Barkhaus, entered her store and asked if a public telephone was available to call the fire department.

The western stairwell landing on the second floor had two substandard corridor doors with glass panes propped open (possibly by a teacher) at the time of the fire.

As the fire consumed the northeast stairway, a pipe chase running from the basement to the cockloft above the second floor false ceiling had been feeding superheated gases for some minutes on a direct route to the attic.

For 329 children and five teaching nuns, the only remaining means of escape was to jump from the second floor windows to the concrete or crushed rock 25 ft (7.6 m) below, or to wait for the fire department to rescue them.

One nun, Sister Mary Davidis Devine, ordered her students in room 209 to place books and furniture in front of her classroom doors, and this helped to slow the entry of smoke and flames until rescuers arrived.

Janitor James Raymond, though badly injured himself from a deep glass cut on his arm, worked in tandem with Fr Charles Hund to open a locked emergency door leading to a fire escape outside room 207.

WGN-AM radio broadcast continuous updates of the fire, with Chicago Police Officer Leonard Baldy providing observations from an overhead helicopter.

[19][20][21][22] In 1959, the National Fire Protection Association's report on the blaze blamed civic authorities and the Archdiocese of Chicago for "housing children in structures which are 'fire traps,'" such as Our Lady of the Angels School.

Of them, the ladder placed by Mario Camerini, a janitor, successfully reached Room 208's windows and allowed several students, including all of the remaining boys, to escape.

The survivors credit Devine's decision to stack books at the door to slow entry of the smoke and an awning that provided an easier jump for their survival.

Room 210, housing Sister Mary Seraphica Kelley's fourth grade class, had 28 deaths out of the 57 students inside at the time of the fire.

The smaller and weaker bodies of the fourth graders contributed to the high death toll, as many of the children were unable to scale the window ledge.

Room 211, housing Sister Mary Helaine O'Neill's eighth grade class, had 24 deaths out of the 48 students inside at the time of the fire.

Life Magazine's picture of a firefighter carrying the body of ten-year-old John Jajkowski, who died in Room 212, became world-famous and was later used as a fire-prevention poster.

A Requiem Mass was offered in Our Lady of the Angels Church after more than 2,000 parishioners paid their respects to the deceased teachers as the closed caskets lay in repose in the convent.

[citation needed] For 27 of the deceased students whose families accepted the offer to participate in it, a Solemn Requiem Mass and funeral service took place at the Illinois National Guard Armory ,[25] abutting Humboldt Park, as each of the parish churches in the archdiocese was not large enough to accommodate the huge crowd.

[citation needed] The City Council of Chicago passed a law requiring that a fire alarm box be installed in front of schools and other public assembly venues.

[38] The Chicago Tribune wrote that the fire "knocked the neighborhood off track and prompted an exodus of many families to the suburbs, leaving poverty in their wake.

The filmmakers stated that the school in the film is not supposed to be OLA, but most of the details are identical, down to the iconic image of the dead student being carried out by the fireman.

This film was produced in 1959 during fire tests being made at Robert Louis Stevenson Junior High School located at 725 S. Indiana St. in East Los Angeles.