Many are saying that this storm compares to the great Knickerbocker Storm of 1922, here is what I could find out about one of the worst tragedies in Washington, D.C.’s history.
On January 28, 1922 several hundred people fought their way through a massive snowstorm to see the show at the Knickerbocker Theatre, which at the time was one of Washington’s largest and most modern moving picture theater. When the show began that night, the greatest snowstorm in Washington’s history was winding down. It had already dumped over two feet of heavy, snow on the city and many flat-roofed buildings, like that of the Knickerbocker Theatre.
Shortly before 9:00 p.m., the Knickerbocker Theatre’s orchestra was playing the intermission and the lights had dimmed and the people were returning to their seats. Suddenly, a loud hissing noise filled the room. The ceiling, weighed down from the snow, had begun to split apart down the middle. The few people who had noticed the crumbling ceiling dove under their seats or ran for the door. Within seconds, the entire roof started to fall towards the crowd. As the roof came down, it collapsed the theater’s cement balcony and pulled down portions of the theater’s brick wall. Concrete, bricks and metal crashed to the ground, burying dozens of people.
George Brodie had entered the theater moments before the roof collapsed and gave the following account: “I grabbed for my hat and coat, and the next minute found myself flat on my face with something weighty on top. I lay still for about five minutes when I noticed at the side of me a girl with an arch or pillar resting upon her. I tried to pull it off but couldn’t move it. Then I started working my way slowly in some direction – I think the middle – and with four other fellows we saw a hole with a light shining through. The next thing I know I was on the street, but I don’t know how I got there. I stayed around for a while and helped several others, who were apparently uninjured, out of the place. It was a frightful sight within, nothing but moans, cries and darkness.”
The scene after the disaster was terrible. People ran through the ruins calling out for loved ones. Shouts from rescue workers mixed with the cries of anguish from victims buried under the wreckage. Lanterns and shadows could be seen darting about through the heavily falling snow. Great masses of twisted steel, splintered timber and crumbled masonry covered the floor of the theater. One reporter wrote that no description of the scene could convey the awfulness of what he had witnessed that night. Another reporter, with recent memories of the devastation of World War I in mind, wrote, “Stark and grim as any ruin in the war-swept area of France or Belgium stood the walls of the Knickerbocker theater.”
The chaotic rescue effort became better organized when the police and firemen arrived at the scene. Police lines were drawn and heavy equipment was called in. By midnight., 200 police, soldiers and firemen were working, digging through the wreckage. By 2:30 a.m., over 600 rescue workers were on the scene. Residents in the vicinity of the theater supplied hot food and coffee to the rescuers. One small boy was even sent into the wreckage, squeezing through the holes between the fallen concrete slabs, to distribute pain pills to those who were trapped under the rubble.
The rescue workers had to dig through two layers of debris to rescue the injured. First, they had to remove the plaster and steel of the roof to reach the people that had been in the balcony. Large saws were used to cut through the roof’s heavy wire screen that had once held the ceiling’s plaster. After the roof had been removed, the workers had to chisel through the cement structure of the balcony to rescue those who had been seated on the first floor. The rescue effort was not completed until the following afternoon.
Once the disaster was cleaned up 98 were dead and 133 injured. Every hospital in the area was filled with the injured. Many stores and houses served as short-term first-aid stations. Hotels opened their doors to the injured as well as the rescuers. The disaster ranks as one of the worst in Washington’s history and the snowstorm still ranks as Washington’s largest single snowfall.