Fire
On April 21, 1930, a major fire killed 322 inmates and seriously injured 150. The fire is the deadliest prison fire in United States history. A cordon of penitentiary guards was thrown about the towering prison walls. Other squads took up vantage points in guard towers and by this time 500 soldiers from Fort Hayes, local military post, were on the scene. Machine guns were mounted at the gates and on the walls. Bayonets were fixed and the troopers were ordered to shoot to kill. A troop of National Guardsmen soon augmented the regulars, and 30 minutes after the fire started the prison was completely surrounded.
The incident was the subject of Chester Himes' (an inmate at the time) story To What Red Hell (published in Esquire in 1934) as well as to his novel Cast the First Stone—later republished unabridged as Yesterday Will Make You Cry (1998).
Read more about this topic: Ohio Penitentiary
Famous quotes containing the word fire:
“Men, you are all marksmen—don’t one of you fire until you see the whites of their eyes.”
—Israel Putnam (1718–1790)
“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched seabeams glitter in the dark near the Tennhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time like tears in rain. Time to die.”
—David Webb Peoples, U.S. screenwriter, and Ridley Scott. Roy Batty, Blade Runner, final words before dying—as an android he had a built-in life span that expired (1982)
“Oh! joyous hearts! enfired with holy flame!
Is speech thus tasseled with praise?
Will not your inward fire of joy contain:
That it in open flames doth blaze?
For in Christ’s coach saints sweetly sing,
As they to glory ride therein.”
—Edward Taylor (1645–1729)