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Weekly UpdatesTen of the 39 patients admitted to Mass General had significant burn injuries, yet the other 29 had slight or no external burns. Some of them suffered gravely from severe lung damage and anoxia (restricted oxygen supply to body tissues). As the casualties continued to arrive, one facet of the crisis that increasingly confounded the medical staff was the seemingly inordinate number of fatalities from causes other than extensive burn damage. Some of the victims appeared to have died instantly without burns at the scene of the fire, while others succumbed after they had reached safety or en route to the hospital. The most baffling were those who came into the hospital apparently with only minor injuries or none at all, and then with little warning, collapsed and died.
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Typifying this phenomenon was a 23-year-old Navy Ensign, who was one of the first to arrive at Massachusetts General Hospital. He walked into the accident room under his own power with hands that were badly burned and some burns on his face and neck. Aside from a flushed appearance and his agitation, he seemed to be fit enough to be held aside as the flood of more desperate victims arrived. Despite being told to lie down and stay calm, he was soon pacing back and forth waving his hands in pain. Suddenly, he fell to the floor hardly breathing. Further examination revealed that his nostrils were deeply burned. He soon developed a swelling of the throat and then rapidly began to experience obstruction of the upper respiratory passages. Hours later, he died.
As the crisis continued, one young doctor was assigned directly to each patient. Moore's responsibility was to monitor the emergency room, taking an overview of the area. By 3 a.m. on Sunday morning, all 39 patients at Massachusetts General were bedded down.
"This flood of patients dominated everything for the next several days, there was little rest for anyone," says Moore.
The research project headed up by Cope was intended to develop a superior and simple method of treating burns. Throughout the year every patient suffering burns was treated in accordance with these studies. The new plan of therapy was carefully tested and developed, and involved the use of ointments containing boric acid. After Pearl Harbor, Massachusetts General Hospital administrative staff had developed a plan by which the institution's full facilities could respond to a disaster of war by virtue of their mobilization plan and this ongoing burn research. The hospital was ready for the crisis that impacted them following the Cocoanut Grove fire.
The awful toll in human life of the Cocoanut Grove fire produced taught medical professionals a lesson of enormous value. Those who lost their lives and those who suffered agonizing pain and misery in the days that followed were to make available through their sacrifice knowledge that was to save thousands of victims in the future.
Summarizing the diverse hospital experiences of the Cocoanut Grove victims is difficult. Each was excruciating in its own way, but each contributed something to the knowledge of medicine. The Cocoanut Grove fire, with its terrible number of victims, became one of the most informative single tragedies ever approached by physicians.
After the Grove fire Moorespent many years practicing in the field of medicine. As one of those directly involved in this tragedy, he was intimately familiar with the medical advances that followed. Among his noteworthy professional achievements, he became Mosely Professor of Surgery-Emeritus at the Harvard Medical School and Surgeon-in-Chief-Emeritus at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital.
Decades Later
With the march of time the fire at Boston 's Cocoanut Grove has become an event from far away and long ago. And yet to some, it seems like only yesterday--a bad dream they are still waiting to forget.
The Cocoanut Grove fire was a tragedy of immense proportions. Perhaps most demonstrative of its magnitude is that a few lingering questions regarding the final death toll still continue to remain unanswered. News reports finally settled on the figure of 492 dead based on their information gathering efforts. But depending on the particular count, questions persisted about certain individuals who had been counted twice or not counted at all, or who died later in the hospitals either from direct physical injuries or from serious and deteriorating psychological scars.
In this regard Fire Commissioner Reilly's report carried a "Master List" of the dead and injured that indicated 490 dead and 166 injured. This list had an effective date of December 10, 1942 and adjusted to October 16, 1943. Yet despite its claim to cancel and supersede all other tallies, it did not include the name Eleanor B. Powerell, who had succumbed at Boston City Hospital. Also, regarding the injured, the list did not include patients treated and immediately released, or servicemen and women admitted to military hospitals. And then their were victims like Francis Gatturna, who several weeks after recovering from his own injuries returned to the hospital despondent over the loss of his wife, only to end his suffering by throwing himself through a closed sixth floor hospital window.
As testimony to the healing power of time and how much has changed through the years, finding the precise location of the Cocoanut Grove today is challenging, even for those considering themselves native Bostonians. When standing at the former Grove site, one can see that even the streets have been altered to accommodate a high-rise hotel complex over most of the Grove's main dining room and Broadway Street Lounge. Shawmut Street now curves into Piedmont Street right at the site that was the Grove's main lobby area.
Today's quiet residential streets at Shawmut and Piedmont in Boston's Bay Village allow a person to stand at the exact location of the revolving door and at the top of the stairway to the Melody Lounge--a place were bodies piled seven and eight high. Ironically, though as it should be, a long string of exit doors from a movie theater in the new hotel complex discharge out onto this site.
The shock of Cocoanut Grove Fire death toll drove society to make significant changes in fire regulations and emergency procedures that would have taken years to change otherwise. This leads to the debatable thought of how many more would have cumulatively died in smaller, less impacting tragedies through the years that followed.
With regards to advances in medicine, the sheer enormity of the work done in Boston's hospitals along with the timeliness of war-related research allowed significant strides forward in medical knowledge. The Cocoanut Grove fire, with its terrible aggregate of victims, became one of the most informative single tragedies ever approached by physicians.
Perhaps the greatest irony of this tragic event is that, at least in Boston, there will never be another Cocoanut Grove nightclub fire. There is only truth in this statement because immediately following the fire, the Boston Licensing Board ruled that no place of entertainment could ever again use the name Cocoanut Grove. Of course, this was only a measure to prevent future exploitation of this tragedy and not to prevent fires.
Unfortunately, we all know that fires of this magnitude continue to be possible. We can only take comfort by hoping that we've learned from our mistakes, mistakes like the fire at the Cocoanut Grove.
About the Author: Casey C. Grant, P.E. is Research Director for the Fire Protection Research Foundation. He can be reached at cgrant@nfpa.org.
This article originally appeared in the November/December 2007 issue of NFPA Journal [R]. For more information, visit www.nfpa.org. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
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