Church of the Company Fire

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The Church of the Society fire (8 December 1863) is the largest fire ever to have affected the city of Santiago, Chile. Between 2,000 and 3,000 people died, probably the largest number of people to die in an accidental fire in any one building in the world, and even one of the worst building fires of a religious building.^[1]

Events

The Church of the Society of Jesus, (Spanish: Iglesia de la Compañía de Jesús) was a Jesuit church located in downtown Santiago. The day of the fire was the celebration of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, one of the most popular festivities of the religious calendar, and the temple was adorned with a profusion of candles, oil lamps and wall coverings. In the main altar, a large statue of the Virgin Mary stood over a half-moon that in itself was a huge candelabra.

That night, the fire started a few minutes before 7 PM,^[2] when an oil lamp at the top of the main altar ignited some of the veils that adorned the walls (some early accounts blamed a gas lamp, as people tried to make sense of the shocking tragedy amid old and new technology, but the church was not equipped with gas. The error, like the news itself, was copied by newspapers as far away as Australia). By a flaw in design, the church of Compañía had doors that swung inward. A strong wind blew the doors open during the liturgy. This wind knocked a candle off the podium and disrupted the meeting of worshippers. The fire started by the burning candle roared through the church which resulted in the church's destruction. More than 2500 people died in the fire.

Somebody tried to put it out by smothering it with another cloth, but managed only to make the fire jump over to the rest of the veils and from there on to the wood roof. The mostly women attendees panicked and tried to escape but the side doors had been closed in order to leave space to accommodate more people (they could be opened only inwards), leaving the main entrance as the primary escape route for most occupants in the church. Men were seated separately from women with an iron grating between them, and most of the men quickly escaped, many of them returning to the burning church to try to rescue those still trapped.^[2]

The priests retreated into the sacristy, and some of the men made their escape by following them. The priests were gathering together the valuables of the church to save them, and they closed the door to the sacristy so they could do this in peace. No one escaped through the sacristy after the door was closed. The priests then left the scene, all unharmed, with what valuables they were able to save from the blaze.^[2]

The main door became jammed with a pile of approximately 200 women and children, which made it impassable. Eventually the side doors were also opened, but they also became jammed. Rescuers were able to pull about 50 people from these heaps, but no more.^[2]

Upon being notified of the tragedy, U.S. Envoy to Chile Thomas H. Nelson rushed to the scene and assisted in rescue operations.^[3] Several days after the fire, Nelson was recognized as a "true hero of Chile."

The big hoop skirts worn at the time made escape very difficult if not impossible, causing the people at the front to fall down and be trampled by the ones behind. Very soon the main entrance was blocked by a human wall of bodies, impeding both the exit of the ones trapped inside, and entry of rescuers. The main tower of the church was built of wood (while the rest of the church was solid masonry) and finally collapsed inwards around 10 PM,^[2] putting an end to the few remaining survivors.

Aftermath

Between 2,000 and 3,000 people perished in the fire, in a city that at the time had about 100,000 inhabitants. Entire families were wiped out. The cleanup of the bodies took about ten days, and since most of the bodies were burned beyond recognition, they were placed in a mass grave at the Cementerio General de Santiago.

A Santiago newspaper printed the names of over 2,000 known victims, and the same paper also printed a list of the objects saved by the priests and their value, which led to public outcry against the priests who had saved valuable objects but not people. Already under fire for designing a celebration mass with thousands of candles and oil lamps surrounded by flammable cloths and decorations, Ugarte and his colleagues drew more criticism when they later explained the deaths of so many women and girls as the Virgin Mary needing to take them without delay to her bosom.^[2]

The remaining walls of the church were torn down, and a garden was planted in the place, with a statue placed at the site where the main altar used to be.^[4] A few years later, a second statue replaced the first. The garden and the statues still exist. The second statue is now part of the Ex Congreso Nacional gardens. The original statue is located at the main entrance of the Cementerio General de Santiago.

The church bells were sold for scrap and recovered. One of the bells was melted down to cast two new bells for the new Jesuit church in Santiago.^[5] Four made their way to Mumbles, Wales, where they were used to call people to worship until they were returned to Santiago in 2010.^[6][7] Two of the returned bells now hang next to the statue in the Ex Congreso Nacional gardens, one in the courtyard of the Cuartel General de Bomberos, and one at the 14th Fire Company firehouse in Providencia. One bell stayed in Santiago, where it was hung in the Hermita de Santa Lucía on the Santa Lucía Hill in 1872–73, the dent from where it fell marking it as a memorial. The tragedy, and the fact that one of the contributing factors was the lack of an organized fire-brigade, motivated José Luis Claro y Cruz to organize the first Volunteer Firemen's Corps in Santiago, on December 20 of the same year. Fire brigades in Chile, even today, are still made up only of unpaid volunteers. New fire regulations also resulted, and the tragedy contributed to the partial secularization of Chilean government over the next two decades.^[8]

Workers excavating for a new line of the Santiago Metro uncovered an unexpected length of the eastern foundation of the church in November 2013. Some Santiaguinos are trying to have the foundation preserved as a memorial.

See also

• List of Jesuit sites
• List of historic fires
• History of firefighting

References

External links

• The New York Times: "TERRIFIC TRAGEDY IN CHILI; Two Thousand Five Hundred Persons Roasted to Death in a Church." (January 18, 1864)
• Nuestro.cl - The fire with pictures of the aftermath
• Eglise de la Compagnie a San-Yago du Chili, Le Monde Ilustre (13 feb. 1864) French article with picture on page 100.
• PANICS IN PUBLIC PLACES. Launceston Examiner (12 Apr 1864)
• Brief story of the church (in Spanish)

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