Hello, campers, grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire.

We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney.

And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction.

We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire.

There's a saying that goes, all regulations are written in blood.

And it's true. If given the opportunity, companies will just cut corners and find loopholes to make their jobs easier and cheaper, skirt some kind of oversight.

And when it all goes wrong, when there's blood on their hands, when there's a dozen microphones in their faces, the people in charge always look contrite.

And that's when the rules change, because some idiot decided that money was worth more than human life.

And that's infuriating, isn't it? The mundanity of that kind of evil?

They wanted to save a couple bucks and now people

are dead and hurt and they're sorry. Today we're talking about two cases where hundreds of people

lost their lives because some bigwig at the top didn't like the idea of spending a little more money.

This is disaster class, a grab bag of deadly man-made disasters.

Case one, Disco Inferno, the Coconut Grove Fire. For this one, we're in Boston, Massachusetts,

on November 28, 1942 at the Coconut Grove Restaurant and Supper Club. It was more of a nightclub,

but technically nightclubs weren't allowed in Boston at the time, but see what we mean about

loopholes? Human history is filled with

people finding loopholes. Everyone's little sibling's favorite game as a kid was, I'm not

touching you, I'm not touching you, right? Well, actually, my favorite game with my little

brother was, hey, look, I broke your nose again. But whatever, we're great friends now, I promise.

Coconut Grove was supremely popular during the 1920s, fueled by prohibition and its seemingly

endless access to booze. This access came from being owned by a member of the local mob.

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