NIAGARA FALLS: Survivors, responders still haunted by tragic Allen Avenue fire

By Rick Forgione/forgioner@gnnewspaper.com
Niagara Gazette

November 15, 2007 10:21 pm

— Annie Chivers doesn’t remember much about Nov. 16, 1957.
But the impact of that day will haunt her forever.
Formerly Annie Reid, Chivers was 4 years old and sleeping in her bed when fire started to rage inside the Moonglow Hotel at 2449 Allen Ave. She’s blocked out most of the horrific memories of nearly her entire family being burned to death, but does recall how she was one of the few survivors.
“My sister threw me out of the (second floor) window to save my life,” she said. “I remember landing on the ground and it didn’t seem to hurt that much because I landed on my butt and I had my hands behind my back. I remember looking up and seeing flames going all the way to the sky.”
Chivers said she walked away from the blaze without a scratch. Unfortunately, others in the Reid family weren’t as lucky. Six of her siblings never made it out of the blaze and a seventh died later in the hospital from injuries he sustained. Also, nine members of the Ewing family died, and two other adults, all living in the three-story tenement apartment — bringing the total body count to 18, including 15 children.
Today, exactly 50 years later, it remains the worst fire in the history of Niagara Falls in terms of loss of life.
To honor the victims and their families, city officials are hosting a remembrance ceremony at 2 p.m. Sunday at the Walnut Avenue fire headquarters. Following brief remarks, a plaque will be unveiled to allow future generations to remember those lost in the fire.
Chivers has made the trip from her North Carolina home to attend the ceremony.
“I don’t remember my brothers or my baby sister at all and I wish I could,” she said, adding the ceremony means a lot to her. “It helps bring them back to life in a way. It helps honor them so I know that they’re not forgotten.”

Responding to disaster
Niagara Falls Firefighter Nolen Curtis was halfway through a typical 24-hour shift when a fire alarm rang out in the bunk room shortly after 4:30 a.m. that fateful Saturday. As a force of habit, he looked out the window and was greeted by a bright yellow sky.
He knew immediately something was wrong. It may have been 50 years ago, but Curtis still recalls exactly how he felt while driving the truck engine on the way to Allen Avenue.
“I was thinking, ‘I know a lot of people in that area’ and I was concerned about it being somebody I knew,” he said.
Once on scene, firefighters quickly hooked up hose lines and went to work, but realized they were in over their heads.
“The place was all aglow,” Curtis said. “There was really nothing you could do, you couldn’t even get near the place it was such an inferno.”
According to newspaper reports, most of the victims were trapped in their beds when consumed by the fire. One victim, Mary Ewing jumped from a window to her death. Her charred remains were later found among the wreckage.
Curtis, who had been a firefighter for three years before the incident, said ambulances and pick-up trucks were called to the scene as the body count piled up.
“You kept hearing, ‘we found another one, we found another one,’ ” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like that before and I’ve never since.”
His feelings numb while fighting the fire, Curtis said the emotional impact hit him hard later that night when he went home.
“It’s hard to accept, you keep thinking what you could’ve done to prevent it or save some of the people, but there just wasn’t anything,” he said. “You go in there with the idea that you’re saving lives and property and you just can’t do anything. It’s devastating.”
Charles Mixon lived next door to the Moonglow and remembers playing with some of the children there.
“It was a tragedy,” he said. “Anytime I see or hear about a fire, I think about it. It will be a memory that will live with me for the rest of my life.”
Mixon said he was sleeping when a firefighter knocked on his door to alert his family the building next door was on fire — and had spread to their home’s roof. The 4-year-old walked outside and couldn’t believe his eyes.
“I could see kids jumping out of the windows and getting killed,” he said, adding he wasn’t surprised at how quickly the building was ravaged by the blaze. “It was a deathtrap waiting to happen. It caught fire like paper.”

Picking up the pieces
As the Reid and Ewing families mourned the loss of their loved ones, numerous law enforcement officials sifted through the building remains and launched an investigation.
Witnesses reported hearing a loud explosion before flames began bursting from the second-floor windows. While the cause was a topic of speculation for years, it was eventually pinned on a basement oil furnace that exploded.
A month after the fire, the home’s owner William Dietz was indicted by the Niagara County Grand Jury on charges of first- and second-degree manslaughter. He was accused of violating the state’s Multiple Residence Law and various housing and fire safety code infractions.
Dietz, who was the son of Falls Fire Capt. Jack Dietz, was convicted on the first-degree manslaughter charge and sentenced to two to five years at Attica State Prison. He was later transferred to Auburn State Prison.
In addition, Dietz and the city were each hit with $1.77 million lawsuits by the victims’ families. Specifically, the claim said the city was “negligent in permitting the old Moonglow Hotel to remain in a condition unfit for human habitation and in direct disregard of city ordinances and state laws.” It also charged that the city “having inspected the premises and with full knowledge of the many violations ... failed to take proper steps to compel the owner to comply with the law and to rectify the many violations, including multiple dwellings, fire escapes, means of ingress and egress, fire walls, electrical wiring and installation, density of occupancy and heating facilities.”
Chivers said the Moonglow had been shut down, but Dietz reopened it and offered it as shelter after her family and numerous others were evicted when the Hyde Park Village housing project was torn down. Several families had lived in the old hotel and all but two — the Reids and Ewings — moved out just prior to the fire. Afterwards, Chivers remembers spending the Christmas holiday in a shelter before moving to another housing project.
Chivers has collected old newspaper clippings to piece together what happened the night of the fire. Her father and surviving sisters helped fill in the blanks too, but they never talked at length. Mostly, her father would tell her stories of her six big brothers, who would put her on their shoulders when she was a toddler and run around the house, passing her around.
“I could tell the pain in my father’s voice whenever he talked about the fire, he would come to tears every time,” said Chivers, adding she also has trouble coping with the loss. “I have these articles and when I read them, it never fails to bring tears to my eyes.”
More than a decade after the fire, Chivers and her father drove to the site, which is now owned by a trucking company.
“My father just stopped the car and said ‘this is where it happened,’ ” Chivers said. “I didn’t get out of the car. I just looked.”
As for Sunday’s ceremony recognizing the 50th anniversary, Chivers knows it will bring back a lot of sad memories, but she’s OK with it.
“It’s good and bad because I know I had such a large and loving family,” she said. “They’re gone now, but it’s good to know they were once here.”

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