The assistant fire chief, who would go on to help direct the removal of the bodies after the catastrophe, remained firmly of the opinion that the fire started in the north end and traveled south with the wind. Moreover, he was convinced that the fire must have started no more than half an hour before the alarm sounded.
The Columbus firefighters discovered multiple secondary fires, including a “burning pile of rubbish, rags and paper” under the steps leading to the chapel and fires in the cotton mill building and the E&F dormitory.63 Fire officials testified later that these fires were of incendiary origin, not part of any prearranged prison escape but just convicts being convicts, taking advantage of the pandemonium to “add to the excitement and general confusion.”
The chapel fire was controlled quickly with only slight damage to the exterior. The cotton mill fire, the largest of the secondary fires, was located on the first floor of the north end of the building. The chief engineer at the power house luckily discovered the blaze and was able to break through the building’s door and spray the contents of a two-and-a-half-gallon chemical extinguisher. It would come out during the fire inquiry that extinguishers were only available in the factory buildings. (Since extinguishers were frequently targeted by incendiaries and there had never been a fire of any magnitude in the cellblocks, this was considered an appropriate strategy under the Thomas administration.) With the assistance of a hose line manned by firemen, this fire too was extinguished. Except for some water damage, the cotton mill building was little damaged.64 The third of the incendiary fires was found in the bunkhouse housing black prisoners. It turned out that several beds had been torched, and when a fireman stepped in to put it out he was threatened by the occupants. He was soon joined by other firemen supported by prison guards, and this fire was extinguished as well.
One firefighter would later lament that “the prisoners expected us to do the impossible. Our line wouldn’t reach to the second floor. We had hell. The prisoners took the line away from us…. If they had any leadership we would have been completely mobbed.” They implied that the prisoners wanted them do something “we couldn’t do.” By some accounts there were an estimated 140 firemen on the scene at the height of the fire, working twenty-three lines, so as to direct twenty-three different streams on all sides of the burning cell house, and eight pumpers, each with a one-thousand-gallon capacity. However, an initial fire report suggested that the number of firefighters was actually higher, as it was “considerably” supplemented by members of the off shift.65
When the hoses didn’t work, firemen resorted to acetylene torches to open cells. Unfortunately, their hoses did not reach the sixth tier, and they were soon surrounded by frantic convicts trying to wrest them away. One firefighter commented, “I don’t think they were trying to be malicious—just crazy with the horror of seeing their fellows die like rats” on the upper tiers. But other cons did make deliberate attempts to stop them from doing their jobs, such as the madman who cut a hose line before being seen running away gripping a knife.
Prisoners and firemen were both adversaries and collaborators. At one point they spent almost three hours helping to loosen the No. 1 ladder truck, which had become stuck in mud in the prison yard. Conversely, convicts tried to set a gas tank attached to a fire truck on fire as the main blaze came under control. Some threw blankets under the gas tank as others threw matches at it. Firemen jumped on the trucks and drove them and the gasoline tank away.66 Some prisoners tried to drain gasoline from the fire truck and as it was being driven away by firemen, others began throwing rocks at it, knocking out one of its headlights.67 Assistant fire chief Norris J. Ijams was attempting to connect a hose to fight the fire in the cotton mill when he was attacked and slightly injured. Convicts also cut two sections of the hose.
The clergy was well represented on Easter Monday. None though were as prominent as the Rev. Albert O’Brien. Following an excited phone call to Aquinas College in Columbus beseeching its Dominican priests to rush to the dying men at the penitentiary, he was among the first to answer the call of duty. Born in a small town in Ireland on January 14, 1888, O’Brien left for America in 1908 after completing high school. He was ordained in Washington, DC, in 1915 and served the Dominican Order in a number of states before landing at the Ohio State Penitentiary in October 1926 as chaplain to the prison’s Catholic inmates, a position he held until his death in 1933. His humor and kindness earned him well-deserved reverence among the prison population.68
O’Brien’s former secretary, identified only as Ex-Convict 59968, chronicled the priest’s heroism that night. He said that O’Brien was at home in his rectory at the St. Patrick’s Parish on East Naghten Street “preparing for dinner after a busy day” when he was informed by phone that the prison was on fire. He left immediately and made it inside the prison within ten minutes. Garbed in his purple stole, O’Brien immediately took charge of the Catholic clergy there. Once fourteen of them had arrived, equally divided between Dominicans and diocesan priests, he sent several to the prison hospital, where he knew they would be needed “to give Extreme Unction to those of the faith, who seemed yet to be living.” He positioned himself and the rest just outside the burning cellblock building, where they could give absolution to the convicts as they were brought out by fellow inmates and set down “among the long lines of the dead and dying” in the darkening yard. They were helped by a prisoner, who identified which were Catholics. O’Brien was standing so close to the cellblock that an inmate suggested that he move further away due to danger of the walls falling on him. The walls crumbled shortly after the inmate’s admonition, “burying prisoners beneath the smoldering debris.”69 Once he was sure that all had been tended to, O’Brien went into the still-smoldering block to help with the rescue, but like so many others before him was unable to get beyond the third tier. He went back into the yard, where he was temporarily overcome by the smoke.70
In the fire’s aftermath, Father O’Brien, the “hero priest,” noted that eighty-five Catholics were on the list of victims being compiled and that “all had received Holy Communion on Easter,” the day before the fire. He recounted a number of poignant scenes, including his walk “among the lines of the dying,” many of whom “reached up their hands, and died as I imparted absolution.” He was particularly struck by a young man who held a rosary in his hands and another who held “a tiny cross of palm on his coat.”71
The G&H cellblocks were adjacent to the prison courtyard, sometimes referred to as a quadrangle or quad. At first glance the bucolic plot of green space could have been located on any college campus, until one peered up at the barred windows looking down from all sides. As soon as a lifeless or injured victim was brought out of the cell-house building, he was placed in the darkening prison yard. The bodies were often joined by groups of convict survivors, many crying hysterically, others wrapped in blankets and drenched in the water from the fire hoses or seeking treatment for burns suffered in their escape from the blaze. The green lawns of the prison yard were soon dotted with the hulks of men bleeding and gasping for air, many of whom were soon covered with blankets in the repose of death. As the acrid black smoke billowed into the cellblock tiers, it began to fill the quadrangle as well, sending panic through the already terrified inmates.72
Poignant scenes played out across the yard. A severely burned white inmate was tenderly administered to by a group of about twenty black convicts. According to lore, he would owe his life to them. They had come upon the injured man lying on a blanket near the west wall and after gathering around him pleaded with him in unison “not to die,” telling him, “hang on friend, don’t leave us.” Witnesses reported them “bursting into strains of familiar plantation songs” as his life ebbed away. And then something miraculous occurred. “A
