Moving Picture World (Jan-Feb 1927)

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254 MOVING PICTURE WORLD January 22, 1927" International Newsreel Photo. Searching the ruins for bodies in the wreckage of the Montreal theatre. P P amc r revention and fj Its P roblems Within Three Days of Montreal Disaster An Audience Files Calmly From a Theatre in New York — The Answer Is Preparedness ■ ir By EPES W . SARGENT WO weeks ago nearly eighty lives were sacrificed to unpreparedness in a theatre fire in Montreal. It served to give tragic emphasis to the recent article in Moving Picture World urging the importance of regular fire drills. The newspapers the country over carried flaming stories of the tragedy. A few years ago the attendance at the picture theatres would have fallen off materially. And at that time those who did come would be so nervous that little would be required to stampede the hardy adventurers who would have entered the theatre feeling that they were taking their lives in their hands. Only three days after the catastrophe the auditorium of one of the New York theatres catering to the family patronage became filled with smoke as the result of a small fire in one of the stores adjacent to the house. An audience of some 800 persons quietly died to the street. Cool-headed attendants at the Audubon Theatre, a William Fox house, emptied the house without a panic. It may be argued that in the Fox. theatre the conditions were different ; that there was no gallery filled with unattended children. That may sound like a plausible argument, but it is not. Children are no more sensitive to the mob panic than their elders. Fear is not a matter of age. There was just as good material for a panic at the Audubon as there was in the Laurier" Palace. The only difference lies in the fact that the Audubon was more staunchly built and the attendants better trained. When the emergency came the Fox staff was ready. They reassured the audience and then got them out quietly. They knew what to do, and they followed instructions. Could there be any more powerful argument in favor of regular and intelligent fire drills ? So far as the newspapers have been able to develop the facts, the panic at the Laurier followed the action of one of the employees in chopping a hole in the floor. Smoke was observed coming from a crack in the floor. Some one ran for an axe and ripped the boards up, giving the smouldering spark the oxygen it required to burst into live flame. Probably the fire had been developing for some minutes ; at the least. It had not yet become menacing. There was plenty of time in which to dismiss the audience before the floor was opened. In any well conducted house the first thought of every person on the staff would have been of the audience. They would have been gotten out before anything else was done. Here the evidently untrained employees had but a single thought. There was a fire. It should be put out. No thought whatever seems to have been given the tiny patrons. Surely it must have been realized that the stairway was dangerous. In a properly planned fire drill someone would have been told off to guard the head of the stairway; to see that the steps did not become packed. That person should have jumped for the stairway at the first indication of the slightest danger. Getting there in time, he could have held back the panic-stricken young sters to permit a more orderly flight. Instead, the children in their mad rush piled into the well, and most of them died from suffocation and pressure rather than from, the fire and smoke. A dozen times in the last couple of years there have been fires which might easily have been attended by fatalities save for good management, but fire drills, plus a marked change in the newspaper methods of handling such stories, have avoided even minor panics. Ten years ago the papers made much of “film explosions” and similar flashy headlines. Today they hold more closely to the truth and do not perpetuate the bogey of “Fatal Film Fire” in the headlines. And another strong factor has been the exit notice, originated by the New York: Fire Department heads, and now copied all over the country. This notice is required to be printed on all New York programs. It is required in many other (Continued on page 306)