Rhythm Club fire


Plaque listing those who perished in the fire

Date: April 23, 1940
Time: 11:30 p.m.
Venue: Rhythm Club
Location: Natchez, Mississippi, United States
Coordinates: 31°33'33"N 91°23'51"W

Type: Fire
Deaths: 209

The Rhythm Club fire (or The Natchez Dance Hall Holocaust) was a fire in a dance hall in Natchez, Mississippi on the night of April 23, 1940, which killed 209 people and severely injured many others. Hundreds of people were trapped inside the building. At the time, it was the second deadliest building fire in the history of the nation. It is now ranked as the fourth deadliest assembly and club fire in U.S. history.

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The Club

The dance hall, a converted blacksmith shop once used as a church, was located in a one-story steel-clad wood-frame building at 1 St. Catherine Street, blocks from the city's business district. The building was owned by the Byrnes family, and was leased by a social group called the Money Wasters. The group hosted events and dances and had brought in a live band to perform. The original band that was scheduled to perform was Tiny Bradshaw and his orchestra, but due to a scheduling conflict the band cancelled and was replaced by Walter Barnes and His Royal Creolians, an orchestra from Chicago. Money Wasters member Ed Frazier ran the club on the night of the fire.

It was a single-story, wood building with corrugated steel siding that was 120 ft (36.6m) x 38 ft (11.6 m) with 24 windows that were mostly shuttered or nailed shut at the time of the fire. There was only one exit, with an inward opening door, that opened into a main entrance foyer that had another set of doors that also opened inward.

Fire

On the night of the fire, the club recorded 577 paid admissions and 150 passes, and the orchestra had 14 members and 5 attendants, bringing a likely final total number of people at the club to 746. Advance tickets for admission cost $0.50, tickets at the door cost $0.65, and the average age of attendees was between 15 and 25 years old. Many attendees were members of the Money Wasters club and their friends. Walter Barnes and His Royal Creolians was performing when the fire started near the main entrance door around 11:00 pm and, fed by Spanish moss that had been draped over interior's rafters as a decoration, quickly engulfed the structure. To ensure there were no bugs in the decorative moss, it had been sprayed with FLIT, a petroleum-based insecticide. Under the dry conditions, flammable methane gas was generated from the moss.

The Natchez Fire Department did not yet exist, but two volunteer companies provided one full-time firefighter. One of the men lived and worked from the Phoenix Fire Station, about four blocks from the Rhythm Night Club. The fire station received its first telephone call about the club fire at around 11:15 p.m. The first fire engine arrived within minutes, and the first hose was targeted at the front entrance and upper ceiling of the lobby and the second was sent into a small open window at the rear of the club. The sound of the victims screaming could be heard through the town. The fire was put out around ten to thirty minutes.

21 of the 24 existing windows had been boarded up to prevent outsiders from viewing or listening to the music, and as a result the crowd was trapped. Some survivors were able to get out the front door or through the ticket booth, while others tried to press their way to the back door, which was padlocked and boarded shut. Upon realizing their limited options to escape the fire, many victims attempted to break through the corrugated steel walls of the building, but were unsuccessful. People broke through windows using their hands and chairs, but the windows became jammed. Blinding smoke made movement difficult. Survivors remembered the burning moss falling from the ceiling and forming a barrier between the dance floor and the exit, with the moss igniting clothing and hair of victims and survivors. The front door was the only exit, and the doors swung inward. Escape from the main entrance was made almost impossible as flames blocked the entrance, pushing the crowd towards the back of the club. Due to the walls being made of metal, and little ventilation for the heat or the smoke, the walls held the heat in the club like an oven. When water from the fire hoses hit the metal siding, it created steam that scalded many victims. Doctors later found that most of the dead had been suffocated by smoke inhalation or crushed as the crowd was pushed to the rear of the building. Most of the bodies were found piled near the rear of the building by the bandstand, the stacked bodies reaching shoulder height.

Ambulances took the victims and survivors to hospitals in the city, and despite strict segregation laws, the white medical establishment treated survivors over the following weeks and months. Throughout the night of the disaster, fireman, medical professionals, and civilian volunteers worked to remove bodies and search for signs of life in the club. Floodlights were brought in to help in the search. Even after the bodies were removed and the site cleared, the smell of burned bodies hovered over Natchez for months.

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