At the bar, Buddy counted out his register and prepared to formally hand over duties to Hugh Cooley at 8:00 p.m. The night had been wild, and Buddy just needed to go to the storeroom, secure his money in the safe, and call it a day. By the Chartres Street wall, Piano Dave was chatting up patrons, perhaps speaking with a few frequent tippers who had taken a liking to him, and Bud Matyi played exuberantly at the bench. A few of the drag queens scheduled to perform for the charity benefit for the Crippled Children’s Hospital had yet to arrive, but time was loose on beer bust night.32 Matyi’s hands danced across ebony and ivory. Hammers hit piano wires as, down below the Up Stairs Lounge, someone stood at the base of the stairs. This person—very likely the Walgreens customer but unwitnessed in the act—proceeded to empty seven ounces of lighter fluid from a yellow Ronsonol can onto the left side of the second step and then drop the canister. The porous wood of the staircase, more than a hundred years old, drank the fluid effortlessly. The red carpeting, running like a ribbon over lumber, sopped up the rest. On the second step, a patch of wet carpet sat ready like a wick. Searching pockets for a lighter or match, the assailant then dropped two ten-dollar bills, which floated down unnoticed. A spark was lit. Then the unmistakable smell of smoke.33
Harold Bartholomew, an attorney, was driving his kids from a downtown event when he hit traffic on Iberville. Bartholomew laid on the horn until he noticed the driver in front of him gaping and pointing. With his car windows rolled down, Bartholomew heard someone shout, “I’m telling you, you better get out of here!” Bartholomew saw a white man in his midtwenties come out from beneath the dark canopy marked “Up Stairs.” A second man, wearing a T-shirt with writing across the back, approached the first man and slapped a hand over his back to hurry him along. “That’ll fix the mother-fuckers,” Bartholomew heard one of them say as they ran. An unnamed witness in a neighboring building thought he saw the two men get into a honking car. Everything was happening at high speed. Continuing to beep his horn to move traffic along, Bartholomew pulled his vehicle almost parallel with the canopy. His kids screamed. Acrid black smoke suddenly bellowed from the entryway. Across the street from the Up Stairs Lounge, Katherine Kirsch hit a commercial break on her TV program and ducked out for a pack of cigarettes. Her feet hit the sidewalk, and Kirsch heard someone say “fire” as she crossed Iberville toward Walgreens. She looked into the doorway of the Up Stairs Lounge. Flames gathered on a front step. It was about 7:53 p.m., and the sun had yet to set.34
Kirsch started yelling and ran into the nearest bar, the Midship, to sound the alarm. A retired soldier sprinted out to assess the emergency situation. Maybe he could douse the flames with a pitcher, but the blaze crackled stubbornly in a small pool that looked to be fueled with oil. The fire spread from the second to the third step as the veteran ducked back into the Midship. He shouted for the barmaid to call the seven-digit emergency fire number (911 did not yet exist in New Orleans). It was 7:56, and help was already en route from the Central Fire Station, which was located just two blocks away. The soldier ran back to see the fire snaking aggressively up to the top of the stairwell. “It sounded like firecrackers going off in there,” he later told the States-Item (New Orleans’s other daily newspaper at the time), perhaps hearing the shorting out of electrical wires. “That stairway was gone.”35 No one was going into the Up Stairs Lounge now, nor was anyone coming out.
Harold Bartholomew would later describe this staircase as a “door to hell.” The smoldering scent, stirred by a northerly wind in gusts of five to ten miles per hour, wafted all the way down Chartres Street to the Cabildo Gallery off Jackson Square. “The smell of smoke and a taste of barbeque,” remembered curator Joseph Bermuda, who found the odor odd. People drinking across the way left their tables, saying, “There’s a fire, there’s fire!” The smell became pungent. “I came out in the middle of the street,” said Bermuda, “and I could see five blocks down: smoke. I realized it was serious, and I walked all the way down the street to see what was going on.” Bermuda headed briskly past the Club New Orleans Baths on Toulouse Street, then past the state Fourth Circuit Courthouse toward he knew not what.36
At the top of the bar’s landing, a window flickered light through gloom and soot. Exposed to flames below, this tiny aperture now acted as a vent to a chimney. Witnesses watched as the staircase became fully engorged and began to project heat in waves, like a makeshift furnace stoking temperatures above 1000 degrees Fahrenheit. What wasn’t yet burning on the walls and stairs through direct contact released volatile gases, in the process that solid matter takes to heat up to its ignition temperature. Flammable, poisonous vapors rose and gathered in an air pocket—right near the metal door to the Up Stairs Lounge. Trapped in the enclosure of the staircase and with nowhere else to vent, these gases increased in pressure and sank deeper toward the wood embers.37
The now-raging conflagration threatened to become what fire marshals would call a “flashover,” when a room ignites floor to ceiling. But there was a slight cessation to the fire when the cramped stairwell abruptly ran out of air. Here was the chance, if any, to douse the flames. Having consumed all the oxygen in the space, the fire now struggled to suck wind down through the window and up from the street.
Trapped behind the metal door, patrons of the Up Stairs Lounge had no clue what awaited them. They milled about. There was a sudden ringing inside the bar. Buddy knew the sound. It came from a buzzer installed at the street level to notify him of morning deliveries or the presence of a taxi. Buddy looked around the bar. This buzzer felt odd. No customer had asked him to use the bar phone to call a cab, and the piano was loud. “Who’s hitting that buzzer?” Buddy yelled. “Go check to see who’s hitting that buzzer.” The sound continued. Buddy wondered if it was one of those troublemakers he’d kicked out. The drone was relentless, triggered he thought by an electrical short, by a prankster, or some combination. Back in the storeroom, Hugh Cooley counted out a register and opened the safe. Buddy shouted to a nearby patron, MCC congregant Luther Boggs, to open the door and yell down.38
Luther turned the knob and pulled inward. As he did, air slid into the staircase. Touched with oxygen, superheated gases detonated on contact. Luther, in disbelief, pulled the door ajar, and the explosion rushed through in a fireball. Fire flew down the length of the bar in a backdraft that resounded like a cannon. The flames cleaved forty-four feet across the room—past the archway and into the crowd singing at the grand piano. Already burning, some began screaming on the spot. Others dove haplessly under chairs or the piano for cover. Glasses fell. Tables tipped over. The blast knocked Luther to the floor.39
MCC member Frank Dean, who’d been in the military for fifteen years, described it as “a flame shot from a flamethrower.” Another customer called it a “big block of fire.” Hearing desperate yelling, Buddy turned his head as the lights went out. He remembered what he saw as “a blast furnace.” Then soot and smoke took care of visibility. People began stampeding.40
“Don’t panic!” Buddy shouted as he flicked on a flashlight and hopped over the bar. “Adam was sitting right where Buddy jumped over,” recalled Ricky Everett, who was looking into the first room. “And he yelled at Adam to follow.” Ricky then saw fire peel a length of carpet off the floor, which seemed to hang in the air. Used to taking charge in the bar, Buddy moved with purpose. He grabbed people by the collar, the elbow, the arm, anything to shake them as they looked transfixed. “Come with me,” he said as he headed toward the archway to the second room. “Follow me, follow me, follow me.” Darkness enveloped the space, inciting “smoke blindness,” a form of claustrophobia from sudden light deprivation (imagine losing your primary sense when you are intoxicated and at the peak moment of an emergency). Buddy physically dragged Ricky Everett from his chair.41
Intense heat shattered lightbulbs. Fire licked its way up the wallpaper and chased decorations across the ceiling. Within seconds, a ten-foot-tall plume lifted a ceiling tile, which exposed the pocket of air above the bar and
created a second rush of flame toward every corner of the room. A plastic-fed firestorm blew over the heads of patrons, who couldn’t see the blaze moving faster than they could sprint. It chewed up walls like linen. It whooshed across the tinder-dry space—snapping and sizzling in its thrust. A line began to form behind Buddy as Jeanne Gosnell scooped up Luther Boggs near the doorway and headed for a window.42
Robert Vanlangendonck had finally gotten into a bathroom stall when someone shouted, “Oh, they’ve started a fire out there.” He backed out of the stall and saw a glow reflecting beneath the door. Then three or four men ran into the bathroom. One said he planned to wait until a fireman came and got him. Robert decided to get out. The hallway dead-ended in a rolling darkness. He took a breath and entered smoke. He waved his arms in front of him, attempting to feel his way forward. His hands touched a nearby window, next to the restroom door. Just then, another patron threw a chair through the glass and cut Robert’s hands. A burst of air from the outside world coaxed flames into a vortex, burning his arm. The first man hopped through, ahead of everyone, onto the fire escape. He looked for a street ladder—only there was no ladder to take them down to Iberville. This particular fire escape led only toward the rooftop. From down on Iberville Street, looking up from his car, Harold Bartholomew saw the window shatter and this man rush out.43
Glass showered onto Bartholomew’s windshield as he told his kids to duck down. Before he could blink, Bartholomew saw the man leap a metal railing and fall twelve feet. Air burst from his lungs when his feet hit concrete. Men ran over to pour pitchers of ice water onto his back, extinguishing flames.44
Robert prepared to follow this escapee’s lead. He sat on the metal platform with his legs dangling. Strangers shouted, but he couldn’t slow his mind to hear what they were saying. Desperate, Robert gripped a metal rod on the fire escape and swung down. “It started bending,” Robert remembered. “And I just sort of floated down to the sidewalk.” Sensing danger for his kids, Harold Bartholomew pressed the accelerator and pulled his car out of range.45
Back upstairs, limping toward the window, his back aflame, Luther Boggs panicked and shoved Jeanne Gosnell forward in an attempt to save her. The maneuver stripped Jeanne of her balance and pushed her face into the broken window casing. Her front teeth shattered, but Jeanne pulled herself up. She emerged onto the fire escape and heard cries coaxing her down. But she couldn’t make herself jump. The world started spinning, and she ran up the fire escape toward the third floor. When she ran out of stairs, she paused at the top and sheltered—unable to move further—and gasped for air.46
Luther made it out behind her. With burns across half his body, he flailed into and over the railing and fell like a human torch. Passersby tried to catch him, and then sat him down as his body continued to emit steam and smoke—literally, cooking as they stripped him nude.47 He cradled bits of flesh that dangled from his hands as these strangers smothered him in a blanket. The blanket clung to his wounds, and he could not adjust or remove the blanket again for risk of reopening them.
Blocked by four bodies in the bar’s Iberville Street window, hemmed in by crowds following Buddy, lovers Eugene Thomas and Fred Sharohway found themselves trapped near the blazing doorway, which wasn’t closing. They’d been standing near Luther when the inferno began, but now they couldn’t see but for flashes of orange through pitch-black. They faced a choice: stand and die or try something, try anything. What happens in that moment when the floor is fire and the walls are fire and the ceiling begins to rain fire? The couple looked at each other and nodded their heads and proceeded to sprint into the fiery stairwell. They burned themselves down the length of the staircase and appeared in the faint light of Iberville. Their burns bubbled. Blinking, they screamed and gagged, alive with ashen faces, their clothing scorched and hair vanished.48
About thirty seconds had passed when Buddy reached the door to the theater hall, the entrance to the oft-forgotten back room, through the dance area. A line of bodies snaked behind him, from the dance floor to the archway that led into the bar area. Buddy fumbled with his keys to unlock the door. Behind their burning backs, bottles popped like corn kernels. Friends cried out to find one another, but the crackle of flames was deafening. Few could fathom what was happening or knew what Buddy was up to. They’d simply heard him say “Come with me.”49
The bar’s back Exit sign, positioned near the theater door, was nonfunctioning and therefore couldn’t advertise its route of escape. Ronnie Rosenthal grabbed Ricky Everett. With the place suddenly illuminated, Ronnie had turned to his new friend, sensing death. He assumed they were jammed, entombed, but now they crushed against each other and waited. In line behind Buddy stood Courtney Craighead and Jason Guidry with Mitch Mitchell—MCC congregants all. A man named Albert Monroe, scorching his face as he passed through the archway, moaned aloud. He’d gone for the fire escape, like Jeanne and Luther, but had to turn back.50
Richard “Mother” Cross stood behind Monroe, closest to the bar area, and debated trying another route. Then flames filled the archway behind him, which separated patrons in the bar area and the dance area. Hugh Cooley had run out from the storeroom amid the chaos, but must have bumped past Buddy in all the confusion. Men now gathered around Hugh in the back corner of the bar area as he tried to get them out through the far windows facing Chartres Street. “I just run [sic] over there and started breaking glass,” remembered Michael Scarborough.51
Buddy then opened the metal door to the theater hall, and men pushed as he ran ahead of them. Twenty patrons shoved into the cool room as Buddy ducked behind the stage curtains. He threw props aside. He must have looked crazed as he moved a giant spool and then unlatched a hidden means of egress. Dusk light flashed onto faces, revealing the Up Stairs Lounge’s unlikely second emergency exit. “This way,” Buddy implored.52 He pulled person after person across the small threshold onto a rooftop. It was 7:57 p.m., one minute since the first alarm.
The escapees wiped their hands and tried to catch their breath. They blinked and regarded one another for the first time since the commotion began. Most men on the rooftop were not burned, not even hurt, but terror set in when many couldn’t find lovers and friends. Some tried to take a tally. Most huddled and coughed uncontrollably until someone found a way down. Evidently, a nearby window led to a neighboring building, one that could take them to Iberville Street and safety.53
Back in the theater hall, three MCC members returned from the relative safety of the roof: Mother Cross, Mitch Mitchell, and Ricky Everett. No one inside knew this way out, they figured, and someone had to tell them. Together, they reentered the Up Stairs Lounge. When Mitch Mitchell couldn’t find his lover Horace Broussard, he knew what he had to do. Balling hands into fists, Mitch trudged into the second room as it burned. Perhaps he couldn’t fathom the danger unleashed in the place where he and Horace had spoken their vows. Likewise, Ricky Everett had lost track of Ronnie. “Going out, there was just so much confusion,” recalled Ricky. “I couldn’t remember if Ronnie was in front of me or behind me, and I looked behind me, and I didn’t see him.” Ricky chased after Mitch, but something stopped him short in the doorway. Standing in the wind tunnel, he watched Mitch—not even five feet in front of him—disappear in a mosaic of amber heat.54
Wind pulsed around Ricky’s body, sucked from the theater hall into the swirling red of a room engulfed—a pyrogenic mass that swayed in what looked like slow motion. To Ricky, a religious man, it felt like a “moment with God,” as if some divine presence was cloaking him in a blanket of protection and holding him safe. “It was a physical feeling that covered me,” he insisted, “from the top of my head to my feet.” Staring into fire, Ricky was struck with a strange certainty: Ronnie was safe while his pastor, Bill Larson, must be a goner. In shock, Ricky stumbled backward through the door. The entire interlude took but seconds. “I did not have one burn or a singed hair or any of that,” he said. “I was perfectly protected.” He found Ronnie waiting for him on the roo
ftop. Ricky cried as Ronnie held him up and guided him over the windowsill into the building next door.55
Mother Cross, the last of the MCC trio who reentered the building, lay on his stomach and inched toward the second room. The crawl was almost too hot to undertake, but he was determined to find his lover, Dean Morris. Mother Cross had metal braces on both of his legs from an accident years before, and he knew that heat could easily melt the hinges and prevent his own escape. From the floor, he searched for feet, for legs, for anyone he could reach with his hands. He saw nothing.56
Meanwhile, having guided the mass of people outside, Buddy backtracked into the theater hall for stragglers. He grabbed Mother Cross off the floor and tossed him back. When Cross stood his ground, ready to fight his protector, Buddy delivered what must have felt like miraculous news: Dean Morris was waiting outside.57
Buddy then shouted into the dance area through the open door. There was no response. He shouted several more times. Still no response. Remembering training he’d received in the air force, he closed the fire-rated door and put a latch in place, locking it shut. The second room was burning, but he knew that the third room would be protected by this act. Buddy had helped more than twenty people, spared the third room from all but smoke damage, maybe even saved the block by containing the blaze. However, he did not know that Mitch Mitchell had reentered the bar and was now barricaded inside.58
Buddy finally exited the theater hall, found his way across the roof, and descended to street level. No longer in danger, he joined the gathering mass of spectators and Good Samaritans attempting to help. Patrons from the Jimani—the first-floor bar located directly below the Up Stairs Lounge—were just then evacuating as smoke massed on the ceiling above them. They’d heard an eerie “pounding noise” from above—likely, people trying to break through the floor. No fire truck was present in front, not yet, as sirens screamed and the equipment wound toward them on one-way streets. Severely burnt men were sprawled on the sidewalk, while Buddy tried to provide comfort. But he could sense that something was catastrophically off. He scanned the faces again. Then it dawned on him: no Adam. No Adam Fontenot.59
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