Atlanta, Burning
The fire started about 3:15 a.m. on Saturday, December 7, 1946. Within the Winecoff Hotel, at 176 Peachtree Street in Atlanta, Georgia, the impressive central stairwell operated like a giant chimney that drew the flames from floor to floor of the 15-story establishment, a prominent fixture of Atlanta’s main thoroughfare. Crews hurried every piece of firefighting equipment available in the city to the scene. The first truck, from a station two blocks south, was reported in position within 30 seconds of receiving the alarm. Eventually 385 firefighters, 22 engine companies, and 11 ladder trucks arrived.
But the call to the fire department was not made until 3:42—a good 20 minutes after the conflagration, which had started in a mattress stored in the hall outside Room 326, had gone out of control.
Feeding on wooden doors and burlap covering in hallways, flames reached the 11th floor. An internal alarm, which had to be triggered by hand at the Winecoff’s front desk, did not sound until around 3:30. By then the building was filled with screams for help.
The Winecoff had a steel structure clad with stone on the lower three and upper two floors and with brick on the intervening floors. Structural clay tile behind the exterior facing was supposed to make the building fireproof, although there were no sprinklers or fire escapes and the hotel’s interiors included highly flammable materials. The Atlanta fire code, which dated to 1911, required multiple staircases in high public buildings, but that rule contained an exception for buildings with a footprint of less than 5,000 square feet. The Winecoff had been squeezed into a tiny lot atop one of the city’s highest hills, and so measured only 4,386 square feet per floor. That meant the hotel legally could have only a single staircase—an imposing design feature that swept from floor to floor.
That Friday night the 194-room hotel had 285 guests registered; the final death toll was 119. Another 65 people
