Babbs Switch Fire
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The Babbs Switch Fire, December 24, 1924, killed thirty-six people in a one-room school house at Babbs Switch, Oklahoma. Whole families died and more than half the dead were children.
The fire broke out during a Christmas Eve party when a lighted candle decorating a Christmas tree came in contact with the cotton trim on a Santa Clause suit. The flames spread quickly over the entire room. Contributing to the deaths were screened over windows and a door that opened inward.
The nationwide publicity over the fire led to stricter fire safety codes for schools and other public buildings.
[edit] Fiction
- Beard, Darleen Bailey. The Babbs Switch Story. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002. ISBN 0374304750
- Grossnickle, Mary Edens. Mary, Child of Tragedy: The Story of the Lost Child of the 1924 Babbs Switch Fire. Schoonmaker Publishers, 1980 (first published as a true story but later discredited).
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