{"id":4572,"date":"2013-07-10T16:09:23","date_gmt":"2013-07-10T16:09:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.asm-aetna.com\/blog\/?p=4572"},"modified":"2013-07-10T16:09:23","modified_gmt":"2013-07-10T16:09:23","slug":"the-hartford-circus-fire-and-aetna-ambulance-volume-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.asm-aetna.com\/blog\/the-hartford-circus-fire-and-aetna-ambulance-volume-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Hartford Circus Fire and Aetna Ambulance: Volume 2"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-4574\" alt=\"Hartford Circus Fire 1944\" src=\"http:\/\/www.asm-aetna.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/Circus-Fire.png\" width=\"577\" height=\"402\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.asm-aetna.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/Circus-Fire.png 577w, https:\/\/www.asm-aetna.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/Circus-Fire-300x209.png 300w, https:\/\/www.asm-aetna.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/Circus-Fire-430x300.png 430w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 577px) 100vw, 577px\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>by Sam Porcello<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.asm-aetna.com\/blog\/2013\/06\/10\/the-hartford-circus-fire-and-aetna-ambulance-volume-1\/\">Read Volume 1 here&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In Hartford, there was just one private ambulance company at the time, Maple Hill, provided through the Talarski Funeral Home.\u00a0 (Many funeral homes including Ahern on Farmington Avenue provided ambulance services in the early 1900s, since hearses were large enough for people to lay down in). Penicillin was newly available, and approximately 85% of the world\u2019s supply was being used in the war to treat infections, including pilots\u2019 burns.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">There were several factors that contributed to the Hartford Circus Fire.\u00a0 Small circus fires were actually pretty common in 1944, because more than 41% of Americans smoked.\u00a0 Safety codes at the time applied mostly to buildings.\u00a0 Since tents were \u201cjust\u201d temporary structures, they did not generate a lot of attention.\u00a0 Requirements for detailed safety inspections, exit widths and having fire equipment onsite did not exist for outdoor events.\u00a0 With resources depleted from the war, manpower was scarce, so there were fewer Ringling employees watching inside the tent for fires.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The tent itself was waterproofed with a highly flammable mixture of paraffin and 6,000 gallons of gasoline, which accelerated the spread of the fire.\u00a0 From the time the fire started until the tent was completely burned away, a total of 10 minutes elapsed. \u00a0\u00a0A total of 168 people died, and another 484 were injured&#8230;.<em>(more to come, check back for future volumes).<\/em><\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Sam Porcello Read Volume 1 here&#8230; In Hartford, there was just one private ambulance company at the time, Maple Hill, provided through the Talarski Funeral Home.\u00a0 (Many funeral homes including Ahern on Farmington Avenue provided ambulance services in the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.asm-aetna.com\/blog\/the-hartford-circus-fire-and-aetna-ambulance-volume-2\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[116,53,46,9],"tags":[357,497,496],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asm-aetna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4572"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asm-aetna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asm-aetna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asm-aetna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asm-aetna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4572"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.asm-aetna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4572\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4739,"href":"https:\/\/www.asm-aetna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4572\/revisions\/4739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asm-aetna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asm-aetna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asm-aetna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}