Hello, I'm your host, Jennifer Meteris, and welcome to disaster area.

Episode 1, the Hartford Circus Fire, July 6, 1944, 168 deceased, 700 injured.

Several survivors said the one thing they will never forget about the circus fire as long as they live is the sound of the animals as they burned alive.

But there were no animals.

Stuart O'Nan, the circus fire.

I hope it burns to the ground the mother of charles nelson riley calling after him as he as a child and a friend were caught sneaking off to the circus that day from his one man autobiographical play the life of riley The Life of Riley. July 6th, 1944 was a very hot day.

By the time noon rolled around, it was about 90 degrees in

Hartford, Connecticut. Now, this wasn't exactly the kind of day that you wanted to sit

in the house and just suffer through this heat. So the fact that the circus was in town

was a really great diversion.

It was something that it wasn't the movies.

It wasn't something that you could do any day of the week.

You know, this was a novelty of sorts.

Although Bringling Brothers came to Hartford a lot.

Lots of circuses came to Hartford.

It was a real circus town, and it was very supportive of the circus. Now, World War II was in full swing.

It was only a month since Normandy since DJ had happened. And if you wanted to get to the circus, you had to save up your ration tickets so you could buy the gas to get there. And you may have wanted to check in before you went because the day before, July 5th, when Ringling

Brothers arrived, they were actually late.

They actually, it was more like their equipment was late.

The tent was late and some of the poles and that sort of thing because of the railways.

Supposedly, that was the excuse that Ringling Brothers gave. The railways were too small for them to fit

their rather large train cars on, so they would take a little more time when they get to these

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