nut Grove club was initially built as a garage. However, during the Prohibition era, Charles "King" Solomon, a local gangster, used the space as a speakeasy (Benzaquin, 1959, p. 36-37). Thereafter, it was run as the Cocoanut Grove Lounge, with the smaller, more exclusive Melody Lounge downstairs. The kitchens and storeroom were toward the back of the basement and thin plywood had been put up throughout the club to cover the old concrete walls and unused windows. Upstairs, a revolving door led to the dance room. Next to the revolving door was an ordinary swing door, which for some reason, was always kept locked (Burke, 1999). These "innovations" that lent the Lounge its air of mystery would prove fatal to most of its patrons on the night of November 28, 1942.
On the night of November 28, the club was packed. Witnesses claimed that as many as 1,000 people may have been packed into the Cocoanut Grove after the Boston College football team lost its game that night (Burke, 1999). At ten o'clock, a small flame erupted in the back of the Melody Lounge, caused either by the busboy, Stanley Tomaszewski, or by the faulty wiring in the club. In his book Holocaust!, Benzaquin seems to support the theory that the busboy may have inadvertently set a palm frond afire (1959, p. 8). Nonetheless, within seconds, the nightclub was filled with flames (Burke, 1999).
The Idea Bank offers businesses and employers information on how to train their employees in preparation for a fire in a place of public assembly. The service notes that individuals and groups often act in predictable ways when faced with the prospect of fire. In particular, most people become disoriented and tend to disbelieve that they are actually in a fire (Idea Bank, 2000). Consequently, it is very important that places of public assembly prepare a specific egress plan in such cases. The Idea Bank notes that research shows that people need a strong sense of hierarchy in a fire emerge...