P. Germain

False Alarm: 1913 Italian Hall Disaster and Death Certificates P. Germain

One need only walk down the main street of Calumet to feel the pull of the past. It is a town of contradictions. You pass a lovely home complete with a carriage house; and then you pass a duplex with the paint peeling, and the yard filled with junk. You see a magnificent sandstone cathedral with its twin spires reaching high into the sky, and then you see vacant lots and a boarded up school with M. M. Morrison affixed to the exterior in copper. Even in disrepair you can see the fine workmanship of the lettering on the plaque. It makes a person wonder what happened in Calumet that haunts the area. The memory of the Italian Hall Disaster and its devastating consequences has not dimmed through the years. During the bitter Strike of Copper Miners in 1913 at a children's Christmas Party on Christmas Eve afternoon, someone yelled "Fire!" The partygoers toppled chairs and tables in their haste to leave the second-floor hall. Because the doors opened inward, the bodies piled up at the foot of the stairs. Within a few minutes, 73 lives had been crushed out, although there was no fire. The deaths of these 73 residents on Christmas Eve is indelibly recorded in the town's history. Even if all the empty buildings were full, copper was king again, and there was no unemployment, it would still be a ghost town. Calumet will always be inhabited by the ghosts of the past. Come. Walk with me. We can catch up with them.