C’est Vrai: Fire, panic, and death

An explosion in an oil stove got the blame for the fire that destroyed G. J. Deville’s dance hall and killed 28 people in Ville Platte in the early evening of Saturday, Nov. 22, 1919, but some people said simple panic had a lot to do with the deaths also.
The dance hall was on the second floor of the “big frame” Deville building that housed a store, movie theater, and restaurant on the first floor. The upstairs ballroom was reached by a set of steps through the center of the building that the Opelousas Star Progress described as “the death trap for many who died a terrible death in the roaring flames.”
The oil stove was downstairs in P.D. “Duffy” Martin’s cafe. It blew up when a boy working in the kitchen tried to light it to make a pot of coffee.
According to the St. Landry Clarion, “The flames spread rapidly to the walls and leaped up the dry pine [and] through the ceiling to the ballroom above. At the alarm the crowd upstairs and down became panic stricken; men and women downstairs rushing to the stairway ... to rescue relatives ,,, and the merry dancers [fleeing] to the steps in an attempt to escape the blistering flames.” The “jam was something awful” and the steps collapsed under the weight of the “mass of struggling humanity.” Doctors said that some of the victims were trapped beneath the crowd and died from suffocation.
The dead were described by the Star Progress, as “mostly young, one or two elderly ladies, and several small children.” Many of the victims, that newspaper reported, “had either relatives or friends in so many sections of St. Landry [that] the calamity has caused ... intense sadness” across the area.`
There was less panic when the fire spread to the movie theater next door to the cafe. Dr. T.H. Littell and Albert P. Garland, who were attending the movie, calmed the theater crowd, telling them “there was ample time for all to make their exit and that the greatest danger was in a maddened rush for safety.”
“The horror of the night might have proven worse if it had occurred later in the night, for the large audience in the picture show undoubtedly would have flocked to the dance room after the finish of the show,” according to one of the accounts.
But other reports say calmer heads in the dance hall might have saved lives, perhaps all of them. According to the Star Progress, “the building was not so high but what all could have escaped by jumping to the ground beneath. ... There was a front porch overlooking the street and ... a jump from it ... would have entailed no greater danger than the breaking of a limb.” Also, dancers could also have jumped to “a small one-story structure” in the rear of the building and from there to the ground.
Firefighters from Eunice, Bunkie, and Opelousas rushed to Ville Platte to help put out the fire and “more than a hundred automobiles and trucks carrying doctors, nurses and helpers rushed to the scene from Opelousas. People from Bunkie “covered the twenty-odd miles over rough roads in remarkably short time, while from Opelousas the big ... fire truck,, despite bad roads and shaky bridges, made the distance of eighteen miles in forty-five minutes flat.
By early morning “the scene of the disaster presented an awful sight in the red glow of the smoldering ruins.”
“The people of the entire state sympathize deeply with Ville Platte and the parish of Evangeline in this awful calamity that has brought tears and untold ... suffering to so many households,” the Star Progress reported. For local people, “the excitement of the night before had died away” and they looked “in sober contemplation” on a scene that would be long remembered.

You can contact Jim Bradshaw at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.