The fast-moving Cocoanut Grove fire killed nearly 500 and changed fire safety and burn treatment as we know it
Quickly after the Japanese attack on the American naval fleet anchored in Pearl Harbor, Americans prepared for fighting on a global scale. The war ultimately brought far ranging and unprecedented social, economic and technological change on a scale that no one could have then predicted.
The wartime awareness that people you knew might be killed very soon meant making the most of the time you had to share. That was the case in Boston on a Saturday evening late in November with a crowd expecting an evening of entertainment and fun with family and friends.
But those expectations would not be fulfilled. Instead, a nightclub fire would change not only their lives, it would impact the very future of fire and life safety for buildings…