On the afternoon of July 6, 1944, a fire broke out during a performance of the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus in Hartford, Connecticut. The circus tent had been waterproofed with gasoline and paraffin and the fire spread quickly with 167 people (mostly women and children) ultimately dying and many others horribly burned. "The Circus fire" details the events leading up to the fire (although the worst, this was not the first fire to hit the circus), the fire itself and the ensuing panic, and the aftermath of the fire, up until 1999. There are accounts from victims of the fire, the firefighters, circus performers, and neighbors that helped out, as well as many pictures that show the horrible results of the fire. The book follows several survivors through their recovery and how they are doing years after the fire.

"The Circus Fire" is a well-written and well-researched book. Stewart O'Nan is a gifted writer and his description of the fire and the frantic attempts of the circusgoers to escape are written so that the reader can picture what is happening as they read the book. In fact, he described it so well that I had to put the book aside at times because I was having nightmares about the fire. His description of the confusion after the fire as parents searched frantically for their missing children and how neighbors and strangers pitched in to help is equally moving (and unsettling at times as some neighbors actually charged a fee for the victims to use their phones). He mentions Little Miss 1565 who died in the fire and was never identified despite the fact that her face was barely burnt (O'Nan successfully debunks the theory that Little Miss 1565 was Eleanor Cook). Her story will haunt the reader as will the story of Raymond Erickson who was taken to a hospital and whose clothes were found there but his body was never located. Also moving is the story of how the survivors dealt with the aftermath of the fire; many had nightmares years after the fire.

The only problem I had with the book is that it switched from person to person and it was often hard to keep track of who was who, especially when there were long gaps between their story. I wish there had been a list of victims at the back of the book or at least a list of the fate of the people specifically mentioned in the book.

"The Circus Fire" is a moving account of a real life tragedy. ( )

first line: "They played by the lake, their tops guyed out on the lot by Municipal Stadium."

Even though I'm not terribly far from Hartford, I'd never heard of the 1944 circus fire until I stumbled across this book. The fire took place during a matinee show under a big-top canvas waterproofed with paraffin and gasoline, and stitched together with material that was also highly-flammable.

O'Nan's account of the tragedy is really riveting, though often graphic and sad. For its wealth of detailed information, I'd recommend The Circus Fire to any persons (fiction writers, perhaps?) researching circus or disaster-relief history, the effects of extreme heat and fire on people and objects, or even human mob/crisis behavior. ( )

A moving and very graphic story of the Hartford circus fire. It starts with a brief account of the Cleveland menagerie fire of 1942, a precursor to the Hartford fire. It then jumps forward and gives an account of the two days before the fire and identifies the principals of the tragedy and its aftermath. The story then covers 6 July 1944 in detail, starting in the morning and continuing into the early hours of the next day. The next several days are covered in detail and then the ensuing weeks, months and years are covered, following the stories of the victims, survivors, the circus and its employees, and the investigators. The stories are followed to their conclusions or to when the book was written.

It is very well researched and left me emotionally drained. I did not like the way O’Nan constantly jumped from one place and person or persons to another place and different person or persons, especially when it was in the same paragraph. I realize that was done to show the reader how many different things were happening at the same time, but I still wish it had been done another way. ( )

3475. The Circus Fire: A True Story, by Stewart O'Nan (read 21 Aug 2001) I think this book tells about as well as it can be told of the July 6, 1944, fire at Hartford, Conn. I found this an extraordinarily engrossing read, in every respect. There is a book, The Great Hartford Circus Fire, by Henry Cohn and David Ballior, which concentrates on the interesting legal aspects of the fire which looks like it would also be fascinating to read. ( )

My family is from Sarasota, FL, where the Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey Circus had their winter quarters for many years. My great-grandmother on my mother's side used to watch some of the circus kids while their parents trained, and my mom had heard stories about this fire, and then when I was younger, I had heard the same stories. We had known Merle Evans, and he told us about that day.

I had not known about this book until reading about it in a thread on LT, so I thought I would give it a try and learn a little bit more about that awful day. O'Nan presents what is clearly a well-researched, if not always well-written, history about that day, and the events that (may or may not have) led up to it, and the circumstances that followed. After O'Nan introduces each person, he continues to write about these people as if the reader is as familiar them as he is due to his researching them. If you can let go of trying to keep track of who is who (there is a huge number of people involved) and simply read the book and accept the facts as they are presented, you will have a better chance of getting something out of this book. I kept trying to keep straight in my head who was who, but after awhile I simply gave up on this and just read.

Due to the nature of the tragedy, I don't know that it's possible for O'Nan to write this without some sense of sensationalizing the facts, but everything that he writes clearly gets across the horror of the day. The accompanying photographs help you visualize exactly what happened during the fire. The book itself suffers from some writing errors throughout, and these probably could have been fixed with a stronger editing, but they are not overly distracting.

O'Nan clearly researched his facts, and while he tries to present some possible explanations to the cause of the fire and circumstances surrounding it, he doesn't try to present these as fact. He relies on the established facts that have been proven, and draws on these to present the story as best he can. This book won't be for everyone. It was a horrible day, and O'Nan doesn't try to sugar-coat the events or what happened to the victims of the fire. For those that are interested in learning more about the fire, however, this will prove to be an interesting read. ( )

Interesting read, particularly that element of the tragedy about the unidentifed body of the young girl. ( )

true story of tragic fire in Hartford CT circa 1944

3.02 ( )

At first, the fire was small. The flames burned a hole the size of a silver dollar in the canvas wall of the big-top tent. Very few of the 8,700 people inside saw the smoke and flames. They were too busy watching the lion act and the Wallenda family’s high-wire act—all part of the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus. Those who did the see the fire at its origin shrugged and thought, “Somebody will be along soon to put it out.�

But nobody doused the flames that afternoon.

What happened during the next few disastrous minutes on July 6, 1944 in Hartford, Connecticut changed history. Those of you who pick up and read The Circus Fire by Stewart O’Nan will be witnesses to that history and, try as you might, you’ll never be able to erase it from your mind.

Reading this minute-by-minute, detailed account of the Hartford Circus Fire is the closest you’ll ever come to experiencing the heart-shriveling terror and confusion of the event. O’Nan brings the disaster to life so vividly you’ll swear the pages smell like smoke.

The fire, a sad landmark in American disaster history, killed 167 and injured thousands—most of them trampled as panic-stricken circus-goers clogged the narrow exits while trying to escape the burning and collapsing tent. There were heroes (Bill Curlee who stood on top of a lion cage and pulled dozens of children to safety), there were villains (a sailor who broke a woman’s jaw to keep her from escaping before him) and there were tragic victims (relatives who went back inside in search of loved ones who’d already made it to safety). The stories are manifold and they are heartbreaking, all of them brought to us under the watchful gaze of O’Nan, a novelist and short story writer (Everyday People, Snow Angels).

O’Nan says he never intended to write the book. Soon after moving to Hartford, the novelist went in search of an account of the city’s “emotional touchstone.� He came up empty-handed. “So many people had died, I couldn’t believe no one had commemorated the event,� he writes in the book’s foreword. He started doing research, thinking he’d turn his notes over to another writer, one who specialized in non-fiction. Instead, the stories wormed their way into his heart. “I started asking people around town what they knew about it. Everyone had a friend or neighbor who had been there that day, a grandmother or a cousin. Everyone had a story.�

O’Nan carefully compiled the stories, winnowed down the thousands of witnesses to a manageable two dozen or so, then he stepped back and let the tale tell itself. With only a few exceptions (“It was snowing fire,� is one), O’Nan resists literary flourishes. Ignoring the fiction-reflex, he presents the story in an exact, clear-eyed style—it’s as if we were watching a documentary on the History Channel. It is the smartest move he could ever make. There are times when real life needs to be fluffed-up and tinted—this is not one of those times. The facts of the fire and the testimonies of the survivors and investigators are strong enough to break the stoniest of hearts.

I read through The Circus Fire at breakneck speed and came away shaken and haunted through and through.

Suspense builds as we watch the ill-fated, war-weary crowd gather for the matinee on that stifling hot afternoon. We’re taken inside the huge tent, we sit down next to several families as they watch the lion-tamer’s act and then the acrobatic thrills of the Great Wallendas. We groan at the irony of a vendor moving through the aisles, hawking paper fans and calling, “It’s going to get hotter and hotter.� The band blares, the cats roar, the sawdust swirls.

And then it starts. To this day, no one knows exactly what caused the fire (though O’Nan follows every investigative lead). The why and how doesn’t matter to those 8,700 people; they’re only concerned with the what of the moment. O’Nan really jolted me with these four sentences:

The flames leapt up the roof, and now everybody could see the fire. No one was going to put this out. The crowd gasped and then let loose a roar. The grandstands stood, and the chairs went over with a deafening clatter, Coke bottles rolling down the risers.

O’Nan’s description of the fire and panicking crowd-crush goes on for nearly 50 pages. It’s like watching a slow-motion horror film and reading it is an emotionally-draining experience.

The Circus Fire is liberally sprinkled with photographs—some of them, incredibly, taken just before and just after the fire started. The pictures of terrified survivors running from the still-burning tent are as haunting as O’Nan’s text.

What struck me the most about The Circus Fire was the unselfish, heroic display of human spirit during and after the fire. In the confusing aftermath, strangers took children under their wing and helped them reunite with parents (those who survived the flames, at any rate). Residents of neighboring homes opened their doors, served lemonade, treated burns and let survivors use the telephone to call families (of course, there were an opportunistic few who charged five dollars a call). Emergency workers quickly deployed to set up a makeshift morgue in the armory, lining up the charred bodies on cots and leading relatives through the gruesome task of identification (to this day, several bodies remain unidentified, buried in anonymous graves—most famously, the blonde-haired Little Miss 1565 whose cherubic face struck an emotional chord in America). In the midst of the awful event, it was comforting to be reminded that mankind does sometimes rise to the occasion.

The circus owners, however, come away smelling like elephant dung. Starting with Rickett’s Equestrian Circus in 1799, circuses in America had been prone to fires, train wrecks and other unnatural disasters. By the time Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus reached Hartford on July 5, 1944, they’d had their share of troubles that year: political in-fighting between the owners, labor problems and schedule delays. Surely the least of their worries was the common practice of weatherproofing the big top by coating it with 6,000 gallons of gasoline and 18,000 pounds of paraffin. It was a proven method for keeping out the rain, they later told the court. As with the book’s other events, O’Nan tells the Ringling story with the emotional balance of a court reporter.

It is, however, one transcript you’ll never ever forget. ( )