Almost fifty years ago this year a tragic fire in an old parochial school in Chicago took the lives of 87 children and three Roman Catholic nuns who were their teachers.  The Our Lady of Angels fire was a watershed moment in the United States when it came to fire safety in our schools.  In the aftermath of the fire, many of the fire safety practices we now have in our schools—alarm systems, fire drills, marked exits, fire inspections, etc.—came into being following this tragic loss of so many young people.  Time heals all wounds…but it also causes us to forget those lessons which ought not to be forgotten.

Janet Wilmoth, a friend of mine and the Editor of Fire Chief magazine, posted a piece on that publication’s website about an astounding discovery recently at Chicago school where the school had installed steel bars on the upper floors of the school to prevent children from falling out of the windows.  I urge you to click on that last link and read her entire piece because her professional writing abilities due the topic justice: it sent “chills down my spine” as a professional firefighter.

Bars on the windows to keep children in the school.  Bars that lacked any means for firefighters to remove them—short of the time-consuming task of cutting through them with power saws—should they need to if they had to rescue children in the event of a fire.  In a city that’s experienced the horror of 87 children and three nuns dying in a place of learning.  And that wasn’t the only school: there were two others that people knew about.

So what’s happening at your child’s school?