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To Sleep with the Angels by David Cowan5/23/2023 As the fire ate through the ceilings into the classrooms the situation worsened. At that point the students were left with two choices: stay in the room and pray, or go to the windows for fresh air and the possibility of escape by jumping from the second story windows. The teachers and students did not know the fire was burning until they touched a door and found it the handle to hot to touch or opened the door momentarily, only to be forced back into the room by the noxious smoke and fire. The fire blew through the ceiling into the second floor corridor moments before the students would have been dismissed for the day. Heavy wooden doors blocked the fire from entering the first floor corridor so the fire took the only other exit it could by moving up the space between the walls and from there to the attic. The superheated gases from the fire shattered a window in the stairwell giving the fire a new source of oxygen that greatly increased its power. The fire may have burned unnoticed for up to 30 minutes, consuming the trash barrel and then setting fire to the steps to the first floor. On December 1st 1958 shortly before the students' dismissal from school for the day a fire broke out at Our Lady of The Angels school in Chicago.
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