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Report on Cocoanut Grove Nightclub Fire Essay

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At 2215 hrs, on November 28, 1942, Fire Alarm Headquarters from Box 1514, situated at Stuart and Carver streets, received an alarm. When the responding apparatus arrived they found a small car fire at the corner of Stuart Street and Broadway. After the fire was extinguished the firefighters were about to return to quarters when their attention was called to smoke emanating from the Cocoanut Grove Nightclub a few doors away. Upon their arrival at the entrance of the Broadway lounge on Broadway they encountered numerous people leaving the premises admidst the cries of “fire”. The chief in charge immediately ordered that a third alarm be sounded from Alarm Box 1521 which the alarm was received by fire alarm headquarters at 2223 hrs. A …show more content…

Kitchen and Heating Plant

The kitchen, located in the basement, approximately 34 feet by 63 feet in size adjoined the Melody Lounge on the north side (Shawmut Street). It obviously contained the normal kitchen items.

It was an unfinished room with a concrete floor, walls and ceiling.

Exits were by means of a stairway to the main dining room and by the door into the passageway, and into the adjoining room occupied by the heating plant, which had an exit to Shawmut Street, called the service door.

The heating plant was contained in a room approx. 16 feet by 40 feet in size, on the Shawmut Street Side. It adjoined the kitchen and it contents consisted of a furnace, fired by fuel oil from two 275-gallon storage tanks.

Another section of the basement (on the Piedmont Street side) adjoined the kitchen and the Melody Lounge, and was used as a storage vault.

Dressing Rooms

In the second-class structure (no. 4-6 Shawmut Street), adjoining the first class structure (located between the main dining room and the Broadway Lounge) on the second and third floors, were located the dressing rooms used by entertainers employed at the Cocoanut Grove Club.

Entrance to these rooms was from a door leading from the main dining room near the orchestra platform (on the Shawmut Street side), or from the Shawmut Street by a door at the foot of the stairway to the second and third floors.

The dressing rooms had ordinary plaster walls, wooden floors and

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