The Winecoff Fire

The Untold Story of America's Deadliest Hotel Fire

De: Sam Heys, Allen B. Goodwin

Narrado por: Bruce Conger

Almost 75 years later, the question persists: accident or arson?

As America slept in the pre-dawn hours of December 7, 1946 — in preparation for a somber remembrance of the fifth anniversary of Pearl Harbor Day — 280 of its citizens awoke suddenly in a hotel already burning out of control.

For the next two and a half hours, they would fight their own war, mostly against their own surging, unrelenting fear.

Like the unsinkable Titanic, Atlanta’s Winecoff Hotel had been billed as “fireproof”. And, in fact, it did not burn. Its guests did. Or they died on Peachtree Street, or in quiet clusters, huddled together for courage against the silent, suffocating smoke.

It was the worst hotel fire ever, anywhere. The fact that today it is still the worst hotel fire in North America — and the second worst in the world — is testament to its horror.

One hundred nineteen people died. The rest survived by extraordinary heroism or blind luck. This is their story — all of them, the dead and the lucky — a story of ordinary lives colliding with catastrophe, a moment frozen in time.

And a story of an investigation that went awry.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©1993 Sam Heys and Allen B. Goodwin (P)2021 Sam Heys and Allen B. Goodwin

Performance was incredibly difficult to listen to

The numerous readers, background noise, and choppiness made the read difficult. The story was good and moving, but it was hard to listen to due to the aforementioned issues.

OK but needs some context

This was ok but not at all like most of the disaster stories I've read, which spend time at the beginning providing context and historical background. This simply starts with the fire and then feels like a list of who died and who survived, with no overall narrative. The second part focused more on whether it was an arson and if so who might have been responsible but ends without any resolution to the question. I actually found myself wondering if it was an abridged version of a longer work but I guess not--this is just the way it is. So it was ok but I found it sort of unsatisfying.

Took some liberties

You can tell when the og author made some assumptions here and there. And that’s something I strongly dislike in documentaries. For the most part good but if your going to take liberties be upfront about it