"The children who went up in smoke" - Die Familie Sodder

tenbells schrieb:Wegen den Krieg stand wohl kein Fahrer für das Feuerwehrauto zur Verfügung.

Nala-Nyna schrieb:Warum sich aber die freiwillige Dorffeuerwehr (!) am Heiligabend (!) um den zweiten Weltkrieg kümmern musste, ist mir latent unklar.

Kodama schrieb:Vermutlich, weil alle Männer, die den Wagen hätten fahren können eingezogen worden waren.

Teegarden schrieb am 05.08.2016:Aus einer nahegelegenen Kneipe wollte er die Feuerwehr verständigen. Beide Anrufe blieben erfolglos, da entweder der Operator nicht erreicht wurde oder keine Leitung zustande kam. 
Zu diesem Zeitpunkt gingen die verbliebenen Sodders davon aus, dass ihre 5 Kinder auf dem Dachboden verbrannten.
Die Feuerwehr konnte einige Zeit später durch den Nachbar oder den Autofahrer alarmiert werden. Ein Telefon mitten in der Stadt funktionierte dann.
Die Feuerwehr war durch den Krieg stark unterbesetzt und reagierte deshalb erst am nächsten Morgen.
Chief J.S Morris sagte am nächsten Tag aus, es hätte so lange gedauert, da keiner da war der fähig war die Löschfahrzeuge zu fahren und zu bedienen, so musste er warten bis jemand verfügbar war.
Das Haus brannte innerhalb von 45 Minuten nieder

Dew schrieb:Mein Eindruck von der Gesamtgeschichte ist der, dass hier mehrere Geschichten parallel liefen und zu diesem dramatischen Ereignis führten.

However, he had strong opinions about many subjects, and was not shy about expressing them, sometimes alienating people. In particular, his strident opposition to Italian dictator Benito Mussolini had led to some strong arguments with other members of the immigrant community.[1]

The following year, Mussolini was deposed and executed. Yet George Sodder's criticism of the late dictator had left some hard feelings.

Yet George Sodder's criticism of the late dictator had left some hard feelings. In October 1945,[4] a visiting life insurance salesman, after being rebuffed, warned George that his house "[would go] up in smoke ... and your children are going to be destroyed." He attributed this all to "the dirty remarks you have been making about Mussolini."

Another visitor to the house, ostensibly seeking work, took the occasion to go around to the back and warned George that a pair of fuse boxes would "cause a fire someday."

George was puzzled by the observation, since he had just had the house rewired when an electric stove was installed,[5] and the local electric company had said afterwards it was safe.

The younger children were so excited that they asked their mother if they could stay up past what would have been their usual bedtime.

At 10:00 p.m., Jennie told them they could stay up a little later, as long as the two oldest boys who were still awake, 14-year-old Maurice and his 9-year-old brother Louis,...

...remembered to put the cows in and feed the chickens before going to bed themselves.

The telephone rang at 12:30 a.m. Jennie woke and went downstairs to answer it. It was a woman whose voice she did not recognize, asking for a name she was not familiar with, with the sound of laughter and clinking glasses in the background. She told the caller she had reached a wrong number, later recalling the woman's "weird laugh". She hung up and returned to bed.

As she did, she noticed that the lights were still on and the curtains were not drawn, two things the children normally attended to when they stayed up later than their parents.[5] Marion had fallen asleep on the living room couch, so Jennie assumed the other children who had stayed up later had gone back up to the attic where they slept.[1] She closed the curtains, turned out the lights, and returned to bed

At 1:00 a.m. Jennie was again awakened by a sound of an object hitting the house's roof with a loud bang, then a rolling noise.[1] After hearing nothing further, she went back to sleep.

After another half hour she woke up again, smelling smoke. When she got up again she found that the room George used for his office was on fire, around the telephone line and fuse box.

Dew schrieb:Dass gerade am Weihnachtsabend der Fire-Chief niemanden parat hat, der den Truck fahren kann und deshalb in 3,2 km Entfernung ein Haus friedlich ausbrennen kann, erscheint schon etwas dick aufgetragen.

Dew schrieb:Vor dem Hintergrund mutet seine Reaktion besonders blödsinnig an, auch wenn vorher ein Wort das andere gegeben haben mag.

Dew schrieb:´ne Show ab um sich ein paar Dollar abzugreifen,

Dew schrieb:vorsichtig genug gewesen, die Installation wenigstens prüfen zu lassen

Dew schrieb:Weder haben die Kühe am Weihnachtsabend um 10 p. m. bei strammem Frost ( Regentonnen durchgefroren! ) noch draußen zu sein, noch weckt man um die Zeit die Hühner, damit sie noch Körner im Dunklen suchen sollen.

Dew schrieb:wenn man die Kühe an gefrorenen Tränken darben lässt, geben die nachher nicht etwa Milchpulver

Dew schrieb:1.) Um 12:30 a. m. geht das Telefon der Sodders noch. D. h. ihr Telefonkabel tut´s einwandfrei.

2.) Um 12:30 a. m. ist der zuständige "operator" auf seinem Posten und stellt die Verbindung zu den Sodders überhaupt mal her.

Dew schrieb:5.) Hier kommt man am Gedanken an eine Brandflasche nicht recht vorbei. Also ich zumindest nicht.

Dew schrieb:Sonst kämen natürlich auch irgendwelche Zapfen/Eicheln/Nüsse als Geräuschverursacher in Frage.

Dew schrieb:8.) Kein Hinweis darauf, dass die Installation ( Licht ) nicht funktionierte.

She woke him and he in turn woke his older sons.[2]

Both parents and four of their children—Marion, Sylvia, John and George Jr—escaped the house. They frantically yelled to the children upstairs but heard no response; they could not go up there as the stairway itself was already aflame.

John Sodder said in his first police interview after the fire that he went up to the attic to alert his siblings sleeping there, though he later changed his story to say that he only called up there and did not actually see them.

They frantically yelled to the children upstairs but heard no response;

though he later changed his story to say that he only called up there

Efforts to find, aid, and rescue the children were unexpectedly complicated.

The phone did not work, so Marion ran to a neighbor's to call the fire department.

A driver on the nearby road had also seen the flames and called from a nearby tavern; they were unsuccessful either because they could not reach the operator[4] or because the phone there turned out to be broken.

Dew schrieb:Um 12:30 a. m. ist der zuständige "operator" auf seinem Posten und stellt die Verbindung zu den Sodders überhaupt mal her.

Either the neighbor or the passing motorist was eventually successful in reaching the fire department from another phone in the center of town.

George, barefoot,[5] climbed the wall and broke open an attic window, cutting his arm in the process.

He and his sons intended to use a ladder to the attic to rescue the other children, but it was not in its usual spot resting against the house and could not be found anywhere nearby.

A water barrel that could have been used to extinguish the fire was frozen solid.

George then tried to pull both of the trucks he used in his business up to the house and use them to climb to the attic window, but neither of them would start despite having worked perfectly during the previous day.

Frustrated, the six Sodders who had escaped had no choice but to watch the house burn down and collapse over the next 45 minutes. They assumed the other five children had perished in the blaze.

Dew schrieb:Was war während dieser Zeit mit den Kindern auf dem Dachboden?

Wenn sie dort waren, sind sie höchstwahrscheinlich im Schlaf erstickt, so tragisch das auch ist.

Nala-Nyna schrieb:Aber Kohlenmonoxyd ist doch schwerer als Luft, oder? Ist das nicht unten und Arbeitet sich langsam hoch? Dann müsste man doch auf dem Dachboden (abgesehen vom abgeschnittenen Weg!) da oben doch recht sicher sein?

The fire department, low on manpower due to the war and relying on individual firefighters to call each other, did not respond until later that morning.

Chief F.J. Morris said the next day that the already slow response was further hampered by his inability to drive the fire truck, requiring that he wait until someone who could drive was available.

The firefighters, one of whom was a brother of Jennie's,[8] could do little but look through the ashes that were left in the Sodders' basement. By 10:00 a.m. Morris told the Sodders that they had not found any bones, as might have been expected if the other children had been in the house as it burned.

By 10:00 a.m. Morris told the Sodders that they had not found any bones, as might have been expected if the other children had been in the house as it burned.[1] According to another account, they did find a few bone fragments and internal organs, but chose not to tell the family;[2] it has also been noted by modern fire professionals that their search was cursory at best.[8] Nevertheless, Morris believed that the five children unaccounted for had died in the fire, suggesting it had been hot enough to burn their bodies completely.

- Maurice, geboren am 8 Juli 1931
- Martha, geboren am 22 Januar 1933
- Lois, geboren am 25 Dezember 1935
- Jennie, geboren am 19 September 1937
- Betty, geboren am 4 März 1940.

The chief told George Sodder to leave the site undisturbed so the state fire marshal's office could conduct a more thorough investigation. But after four days he and his wife could not bear the sight anymore, so George bulldozed 5 feet (1.5 m) of dirt over the site with the intention of converting it to a memorial garden for the lost children.

The local coroner convened an inquest the next day, which held that the fire was an accident caused by "faulty wiring".

Dew schrieb:George was puzzled by the observation, since he had just had the house rewired when an electric stove was installed,[5] and the local electric company had said afterwards it was safe.

Theheist schrieb am 05.08.2016:Sodder war ob dieser Bemerkung sehr irritiert, da er kurz zuvor die Elektrik im Haus komplett erneuert hatte, da ein elektrischer Ofen eingebaut wurde. Das lokale Elektrizitätsunternehmen hatte die Installationen danach überprüft und als "sicher" deklariert.

They wondered why, if it had been caused by an electrical problem, the family's Christmas lights had remained on throughout the fire's early stages, when the power should have gone out.

Then they found the ladder that had been missing from the side of the house on the night of the fire at the bottom of an embankment 75 feet (23 m) away.[

A telephone repairman told the Sodders that the house's phone line had not been burned through in the fire, as they had initially thought, but cut by someone who had been willing and able to climb 14 feet (4.3 m) up the pole and reach 2 feet (61 cm) away from it to do so

A man whom neighbors had seen stealing a block and tackle from the property around the time of the fire was identified and arrested. He admitted to the theft,[5] and claimed he had been the one who cut the phone line, thinking it was a power line, but denied having anything to do with the fire.

Dew schrieb:Wenn der Flaschenzugdieb ( wer klaut an Weihnachten einen verdammten Flaschenzug? ) aber tatsächlich die Stromleitungen gekappt hätte, dann hätte später niemand sagen können, der Strom hat die Hütte angezündet.

Dew schrieb:Wenn sie dort waren, sind sie höchstwahrscheinlich im Schlaf erstickt, so tragisch das auch ist.

Dew schrieb:CO ist ja nur ein Produkt der Verbrennung ( in dem Fall unvollständiger ), das einen umbringt. Die heißen Rauchgase steigen in jedem Fall hoch. Achte mal auf moderne Beschilderung für Brandfälle. Die bringt man unten an, weil sie in Deckenhöhe keiner sieht.

Dew schrieb:CO ist ja nur ein Produkt der Verbrennung ( in dem Fall unvollständiger ), das einen umbringt. Die heißen Rauchgase steigen in jedem Fall hoch. Achte mal auf moderne Beschilderung für Brandfälle. Die bringt man unten an, weil sie in Deckenhöhe keiner sieht.

Außerdem verbraucht das Feuer den Luftsauerstoff einfach.

Vielleicht kann @micinima ´s Feuerwehrmann dazu noch was beisteuern?

Sonnenschein81 schrieb:Liebster Dew, wie du weißt, schätze ich deine Beiträge sehr. Und auch hier wieder - sehr durchdacht. Danke für deine Posts.

Dew schrieb:Weil es falsch übersetzt ist. Da ist @Theheist in der Fülle des Textes was unterlaufen.