{"id":6300,"date":"2016-02-23T19:24:54","date_gmt":"2016-02-24T01:24:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/?p=6300"},"modified":"2023-12-16T15:35:37","modified_gmt":"2023-12-16T21:35:37","slug":"morbid-fact-du-jour-for-february-23-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/?p=6300","title":{"rendered":"Morbid Fact Du Jour For February 23, 2016"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today’s Inventive Yet Truly Morbid Fact!<\/h3>\n

New York Medical Examiner Charles Norris estimated that carbon monoxide killed nearly a thousand residents of New York City every year in the jazz age. Breaking Norris’s numbers down further – say, for the single year 1925 – his records showed 618 accidental carbon monoxide deaths, 388 suicides, and three homicides. The most inventive of the murders involved a man killed by having a gas tube forced into his mouth until the carbon monoxide killed him. The killer then put the dead man into a water-filled bathtub and reported his death as an accidental drowning.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately for the murderer, the man’s lungs contained no water. And when Alexander Gettler ran the toxicology tests, evidence of carbon monoxide almost literally spilled out of the blood.<\/p>\n

Culled from:\u00a0The Poisoner\u2019s Handbook<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Conflagration Du Jour!<\/h3>\n

The following is culled from\u00a0Strange Days Dangerous Nights: Photos From the Speed Graphic Era<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nDecember 14, 1955<\/p>\n

Downtown hotels and apartment buildings rarely burn anymore in St. Paul or elsewhere, a testimony to modern fire safety practices and the impact of urban renewal, which cleared away a good many old structures rightly regarded as fire traps. But in the 1950s and early 1960s, before downtown St. Paul was scoured of much of its Victorian-era architecture, large fires in residential buildings occurred with surprising frequency.<\/em><\/p>\n

One of the worst was in December 1955 at the Colonnade Building (for many years known as the Willard Hotel) at Tenth and St. Peter Streets. The fire, possibly caused by a worker’s carelessly tossed cigarette, broke out on the top (sixth) floor. One witness said flames and smoke spread with “horrible swiftness” through upper floors of the hotel, built in 1889. A 53-year-old maid, Augusta Heasley, died in a stalled elevator as she tried to reach the sixth floor to warn residents. “We could hear her screaming for help but we couldn’t help,” said a St. Paul policeman who called in the alarm, then raced through the building to alert occupants.<\/p>\n

Most residents escaped on their own, but some, including a man trapped on a balcony, had to be rescued. Photographer Dick Magnuson caught this scene as firemen, working from ladders, poured water into the sixth floor. A few miles away on University Avenue, firemen were fighting a second large blaze – at a car dealership – that had been called in a minute before the alarm at the Colonnade. That fire also took one life. The Pioneer Press reported that the simultaneous blazes “emptied every [fire] station in the city.”<\/p>\n

As for the Colonnade, it’s still in use as an apartment building, although its upper two stories had to be amputated after the fire because of extensive structural damage.<\/p>\n

Whenever I read about people dying in elevators during fires, I’m reminded of this harrowing Chicago tale that I relayed as the January 17, 2012 Morbid Fact Du Jour:<\/a><\/p>\n

A woman who had moved to Chicago last March died early today (01\/08\/12) after she unwittingly went up an elevator as a fire was blasting through the 12th floor of the high-rise apartment where she lived. When the doors to the elevator opened, Shantel McCoy \u2014 who was returning to her apartment with a bag of food \u2014 was hit with 1,500-degree temperatures from gas and fire fumes and killed, said Fire Department Chief Joe Roccasalva, a department spokesman.The fire in Chicago\u2019s Lakeview neighborhood also injured nine others early Sunday morning, January 8, 2012. Firefighters were called to the 21-story building at 3130 North Lake Shore Dr. about 2 a.m. The fire began in a unit on the 12th floor. A man and woman were awoken by their smoke detector and noticed that the fire was tearing through their living room. The man and woman along with a dog managed to escape the apartment but the door to the unit was propped open by the couple in hopes that other pets would escape, which allowed the fire to spread through the hallway. \u201cThe door of the apartment that was on fire didn\u2019t close when they left and all the heat and gases and smoke poured into the hallway. When the elevator door opened up, she just got blasted,\u201d said Roccasalva. Officials with the Cook County medical examiner\u2019s office determined today that McCoy died of carbon monoxide intoxication and inhalation of smoke and soot. Older residential buildings in Chicago are not required to have sprinkler systems installed, according to the city. Older residential buildings can either install sprinkler systems or they can be evaluated and other safety upgrades can be put in place, according to a building department spokesman. The city council recently passed an extension which put off until 2015 the deadline for when building owners need to have the work done, according to the spokesman. The deadline for the implementation process had been set for this month.<\/p>\n

Culled from:\u00a0Chicago Tribune<\/p>\n

This story is so haunting to me \u2013 and not just because it\u2019s another in this city\u2019s long list of inept\/corrupt safety regulation-related tragedies. But just imagine getting in an elevator, being completely unaware that your floor is on fire, then hearing the roar of the flames and maybe even feeling the heat just as the elevator stops at the floor \u2013 and being unable to stop the door from opening into the inferno! I just can\u2019t imagine what that poor woman went through in her final moments\u2026 Talk about being in the wrong place at precisely the wrong time! If she\u2019d arrived home a minute later, the fire department would have been on scene and she would have been alerted to the fire. Or perhaps if she\u2019d approached the building from a different angle she might have seen the smoke? Or maybe she was just a fatally inattentive person and didn\u2019t look up? In any event\u2026 what a bummer for her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today’s Inventive Yet Truly Morbid Fact! New York Medical Examiner Charles Norris estimated that carbon monoxide killed nearly a thousand residents of New York City every year in the jazz age. Breaking Norris’s numbers down further – say, for the single year 1925 – his records showed 618 accidental carbon monoxide deaths, 388 suicides, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-facts","category-sundry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6300"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6300\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12174,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6300\/revisions\/12174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}