NPR 07-11:Remembering the Horror and Heroes of a Circus Fire

A quick-thinking stranger helped Maureen Krekian escape one of the worst fire disasters in U.S. history.

Time now for StoryCoprs, a project that's traveling the country recording 1 your stories. On this summer day in 1944, a circus in Hartford, Connecticut went up in flames. Nearly 9000 people had crowded under the big top that day. Shortly after the show began, the tent caught fire. It had been waterproofed 2 with a mixture of gasoline and wax, causing the big top to be completely consumed in less than 10 minutes. That fire claimed 167 lives, over 1/3 of them children. And became one of the nation's deadliest ever. Maureen Krekian was at the circus that day.

Hartford this afternoon suffered one of the greatest catastrophes 3 in its history, and during a matinee performance of Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey circus, the big tent suddenly burst into flame and burned to the ground.

It was 1944 July the 6th, a very hot day. I was 11 years old. I was supposed to go to the circus with the lady next door and her daughter. I went and knocked on the door and they weren't there. They had already left without me. Now I had never been to the circus before, and there was no way that I was going to go home and tell my grandmother that I was alone. That would never have been permitted. So, I just ran up to street, and went to the circus by myself.

The Flying Wallendas, the world famous aerial act were performing on their trapezes when the fire broke.

I remember somebody yelling and seeing a big ball of fire near the top of the tent. And this ball of fire just got bigger and bigger and bigger.

An eyewitness 4 told us that it appeared almost like spontaneous combustion 5, so quickly was the big tent of a mass of flame.

By that time, everybody was panicking. The exit was blocked with the cages that the animals were brought in and out with. And there was a man taking kids and flinging them up and over that cage to get them out. I was sitting up probably halfway 6 upon the bleachers. And jumped down, you jumped down and it was all straw underneath 7. And there was a young man, a kid, he had a pocketknife. And he slit 8 the tent, took my arm and pulled me out. And then I turned around and grabbed a kid, it was a little girl, and pulled her out.

The bleachers were burned to a crease 9, 60 bodies were removed from that spot alone.

My uncle was out in the backyard of our home. We lived on the same street as where the circus was held. And he was sawing wood, and he saw the reflection of the fire in his saw. He went running around, trying to find me. And of course he couldn't get anywhere near it by that time.

Parents and relatives were standing 10 about not knowing what had become of their families.

I came running out from the circus tent, all the way home. I can still see my uncle. He was so mad. You know ,how you'd get when you have a child. And you think they are lost, then you wanna kill them and kiss them at the same time.

The spot where the tent'd been was a giant mess of walls and wires.

The circus never came back to Hartford until the 70s. And then they never came back in a tent again. But I've never had a desire to go.

What if that boy heard this interview? What would you like to say to him?

Oh, I'd throw my arms around him and thank him, I wouldn't be 74 years old today. I'd be long gone.

It's a tragedy Hartford will never forget and everyone in Hartford hopes it will never be repeated.

Maureen Krekian remembering the Hartford circus fire of 1944 with her daughters Lynn and Joanne. The newscast you heard was from WTIC Radio in Hartford. This interview will be archived with all StoryCorps interviews at the Library of Congress. Subscribe 11 to the StoryCorps podcast at npr.org.