The Winecoff Fire
The Untold Story of America's Deadliest Hotel Fire
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The Winecoff Fire
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Narrated by:
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Bruce Conger
About this listen
Almost 75 years later, the question persists: accident or arson?
As America slept in the pre-dawn hours of December 7, 1946 — in preparation for a somber remembrance of the fifth anniversary of Pearl Harbor Day — 280 of its citizens awoke suddenly in a hotel already burning out of control.
For the next two and a half hours, they would fight their own war, mostly against their own surging, unrelenting fear.
Like the unsinkable Titanic, Atlanta’s Winecoff Hotel had been billed as “fireproof”. And, in fact, it did not burn. Its guests did. Or they died on Peachtree Street, or in quiet clusters, huddled together for courage against the silent, suffocating smoke.
It was the worst hotel fire ever, anywhere. The fact that today it is still the worst hotel fire in North America — and the second worst in the world — is testament to its horror.
One hundred nineteen people died. The rest survived by extraordinary heroism or blind luck. This is their story — all of them, the dead and the lucky — a story of ordinary lives colliding with catastrophe, a moment frozen in time.
And a story of an investigation that went awry.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©1993 Sam Heys and Allen B. Goodwin (P)2021 Sam Heys and Allen B. GoodwinListeners also enjoyed...
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Story5 out of 5 stars 104
If burying a child has a special poignancy, the tragedy at a Catholic elementary school in Chicago more than 50 years ago was an extraordinary moment of grief. One of the deadliest fires in American history, it took the lives of 92 children and three nuns at Our Lady of the Angels School, left many families physically and psychologically scarred for life, and destroyed a close-knit working-class neighborhood.
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5 out of 5 stars
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amazingly gripping
- By Jeremiah Rubottom on 10-12-18
By: David Cowan, and others
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Triangle
- The Fire That Changed America
- By: David Von Drehle
- Narrated by: Barrett Whitener
- Length: 10 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 229
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 203
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 202
On March 25, 1911, as workers were getting ready to leave for the day, a fire broke out in the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in New York's Greenwich Village. Within minutes it spread to consume the building's upper three stories. Firemen who arrived at the scene were unable to rescue those trapped inside: their ladders simply weren't tall enough. People on the street watched in horror as desperate workers jumped to their deaths. It was the worst disaster in New York City history.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Interesting but Loong
- By JAS on 04-21-18
By: David Von Drehle
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The Circus Fire
- A True Story of an American Tragedy
- By: Stewart O'Nan
- Narrated by: Dick Hill
- Length: 11 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 238
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 164
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 165
In 1944, the big top of Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus in Hartford caught fire during the middle of an afternoon performance. Nine thousand people were inside. In seconds, the big top was burning out of control. The toll of the fire, and its circumstances, haunt Hartford to the present day. But it is the intense, detailed narrative - before, after, and especially during the panic under the burning tent - that will remain with listeners long after they finish this book.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Harrowing and brilliantly detailed
- By P. M. Morris on 09-14-08
By: Stewart O'Nan
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Chicago Death Trap
- The Iroquois Theatre Fire of 1903
- By: Nat Brandt
- Narrated by: Gary Regal
- Length: 7 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 67
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 62
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 61
On the afternoon of December 30, 1903, during a sold-out matinee performance, a fire broke out in Chicago's Iroquois Theatre. In the short span of twenty minutes, more than six hundred people were asphyxiated, burned, or trampled to death in a panicked mob's failed attempt to escape. In Chicago Death Trap: The Iroquois Theatre Fire of 1903, Nat Brandt provides a detailed chronicle of this horrific event to assess not only the titanic tragedy of the fire itself but also the municipal corruption and greed that kindled the flames beforehand and the political cover-ups hidden in the smoke and ash afterwards.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Not just about the disaster
- By Emily on 06-03-14
By: Nat Brandt
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Report from Engine Co. 82
- By: Dennis Smith
- Narrated by: Lloyd James
- Length: 2 hrs and 55 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 466
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 400
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Story5 out of 5 stars 399
Report from Engine Co. 82 is the story of one company of New York firefighters battling unimaginable death and destruction every day. Dennis Smith worked as a firefighter in the South Bronx, New York City, and the graphic detail and gripping prose of this firefighting classic drives the most important, accomplished, terrifying audiobook ever published on firefighting.
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2 out of 5 stars
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stog was good
- By Bagladybl on 08-24-21
By: Dennis Smith
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Fatal Friends, Deadly Neighbors: And Other True Cases
- Ann Rule's Crime Files, Book 16
- By: Ann Rule
- Narrated by: Laural Merlington
- Length: 13 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 442
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 374
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Story4 out of 5 stars 371
It’s a chilling reality that homicide investigators know all too well: The last face most murder victims see is not that of a stranger, but of someone familiar. Whether only an acquaintance or a trusted intimate, such killers share a common trait that triggers the downward spiral toward death for someone close to them: They are masters at hiding who they really are. Their clever masks let them appear safe, kind, and truthful. They are anything but - and almost no one can detect the murderous impulses buried deep in their psyches.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The Evil People Do
- By Dianne on 02-14-13
By: Ann Rule
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Report from Ground Zero
- By: Dennis Smith
- Narrated by: Eric Conger, Jeff David, Don Leslie
- Length: 6 hrs and 56 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 211
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 172
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 167
Immediately after two hijacked jets struck the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, Dennis Smith volunteered in the rescue effort. Having spent his career as both a respected writer and a member of one of the city's busiest firehouses, Smith became determined to use his unique background to tell the story of the disaster and its aftermath with the empathy and understanding that only an insider could bring to it. In this audio memoir, he has collected astonishing first-person testimony.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Intersting choice of narrator
- By Sara Roltgen on 09-24-18
By: Dennis Smith
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Death in the Air
- The True Story of a Serial Killer, the Great London Smog, and the Strangling of a City
- By: Kate Winkler Dawson
- Narrated by: Graeme Malcolm
- Length: 9 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 421
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 383
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 381
A real-life thriller in the vein of The Devil in the White City, Kate Winkler Dawson's debut, Death in the Air, is a gripping, historical narrative of a serial killer, an environmental disaster, and an iconic city struggling to regain its footing. In winter 1952, London automobiles and thousands of coal-burning hearths belched particulate matter into the air. But the smog that descended on December fifth of 1952 was different; it was a type that held the city hostage for five long days.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Interesting
- By irene on 11-27-17
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Incendiary
- The Psychiatrist, the Mad Bomber, and the Invention of Criminal Profiling
- By: Michael Cannell
- Narrated by: Peter Berkrot
- Length: 9 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 166
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 148
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Story4 out of 5 stars 147
Long before the specter of terrorism haunted the public imagination, a serial bomber stalked the streets of 1950s New York. The race to catch him would give birth to a new science called criminal profiling. Grand Central, Penn Station, Radio City Music Hall - for almost two decades, no place was safe from the man who signed his anonymous letters "FP" and left his lethal devices in phone booths, storage lockers, even tucked into the plush seats of movie theaters.
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5 out of 5 stars
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16 Years NYC Held Hostage
- By in1ear (John Row) on 04-27-17
By: Michael Cannell
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Public Enemies
- America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34
- By: Bryan Burrough
- Narrated by: Campbell Scott
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 269
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 192
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 192
In Public Enemies, Bryan Burrough strips away a thick layer of myths put out by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI to tell the full story of the most spectacular crime wave in American history, the two-year battle between the young Hoover and an assortment of criminals who became national icons: John Dillinger, Machine Gun Kelly, Bonnie and Clyde, Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, and the Barkers.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Need the unabridged version
- By Craig Hansen on 07-28-04
By: Bryan Burrough
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102 Minutes
- The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers
- By: Jim Dwyer, Kevin Flynn
- Narrated by: Ron McLarty
- Length: 5 hrs and 58 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 836
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 571
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 574
At 8:46 a.m. on September 11, 2001, 14,000 people were inside the twin towers; reading e-mails, making trades, eating croissants at Windows on the World. Over the next 102 minutes, each would become part of a drama for the ages, one witnessed only by the people who lived it, until now.
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4 out of 5 stars
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102 Minutes--A Review
- By Leadinglove421 on 02-13-05
By: Jim Dwyer, and others
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All Souls
- A Family Story from Southie
- By: Michael Patrick MacDonald
- Narrated by: Michael Patrick MacDonald
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 41
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 36
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Story5 out of 5 stars 36
The anti-busing riots of 1974 forever changed Southie, Boston's working-class Irish community, branding it as a violent, racist enclave. Michael Patrick MacDonald grew up in Southie's Old Colony housing project. He describes the way this world within a world felt to the troubled yet keenly gifted observer he was even as a child. But the threats - poverty, drugs, a shadowy gangster world - were real. All Souls is heartbreaking testimony to lives lost too early, and the story of how a place so filled with pain could still be "the best place in the world".
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5 out of 5 stars
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this book broke me in the best way
- By anon on 02-14-23
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Tinderbox
- The Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation
- By: Robert W. Fieseler
- Narrated by: Paul Heitsch
- Length: 11 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 69
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 64
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 64
Buried for decades, the Up Stairs Lounge tragedy has only recently emerged as a catalyzing event of the gay liberation movement. In revelatory detail, Robert W. Fieseler chronicles the tragic event that claimed the lives of 31 men and one woman on June 24, 1973, at a New Orleans bar, the largest mass murder of gays until 2016. Relying on unprecedented access to survivors and archives, Fieseler creates an indelible portrait of a closeted, blue-collar gay world that flourished before an arsonist ignited an inferno that destroyed an entire community.
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4 out of 5 stars
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New Orleanians are Picky
- By Samantha Ruegge-Winn on 10-25-19
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Hellhound on His Trail
- The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin
- By: Hampton Sides
- Narrated by: Hampton Sides
- Length: 15 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,106
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 819
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 819
On April 23, 1967, Prisoner #416J, an inmate at the notorious Missouri State Penitentiary, escaped in a breadbox. Fashioning himself Eric Galt, this nondescript thief and con man - whose real name was James Earl Ray -drifted through the South, into Mexico, and then Los Angeles, where he was galvanized by George Wallace's racist presidential campaign. With relentless storytelling drive, Sides follows Galt and King as they crisscross the country, one stalking the other, until the crushing moment at the Lorraine Motel.
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5 out of 5 stars
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History Comes Alive
- By L. Lyter on 06-29-10
By: Hampton Sides
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The Last Madam
- A Life in the New Orleans Underworld
- By: Christine Wiltz
- Narrated by: Donna Postel
- Length: 9 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 319
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 286
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 283
1916: Norma Wallace, age 15, arrived in New Orleans. Sexy and shrewd, she quickly went from streetwalker to madam and by 1920 had opened what became a legendary house of prostitution. There she entertained a steady stream of governors, gangsters, and movie stars until she was arrested at last in 1962. Shortly before she died in 1974, she tape-recorded her memories. With those tapes and original research, Christine Wiltz chronicles Norma's rise and fall with the social history of New Orleans.
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5 out of 5 stars
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pronunciations
- By lynda on 07-29-19
By: Christine Wiltz
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Survival in the Shadows
- Seven Jews Hidden in Hitler's Berlin
- By: Barbara Lovenheim
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 8 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 85
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 72
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Story5 out of 5 stars 73
The remarkable true story of two families that survived against all odds in the heart of the Nazi capital. Survival in the Shadows rivetingly chronicles the incredible survival of seven German Jews in Berlin through the final and most deadly years of the Holocaust.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Awesome story
- By Kimberly R Gillus on 12-12-15
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Detroit
- An American Autopsy
- By: Charlie LeDuff
- Narrated by: Eric Martin
- Length: 7 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,329
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,177
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,171
In the heart of America, a metropolis is quietly destroying itself. Detroit, once the richest city in the nation, is now its poorest. Once the vanguard of America’s machine age - mass production, automobiles, and blue-collar jobs - Detroit is now America’s capital for unemployment, illiteracy, foreclosure, and dropouts. With the steel-eyed reportage that has become his trademark and the righteous indignation that only a native son can possess, journalist Charlie LeDuff sets out to uncover what has brought low this once-vibrant city, his city.
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3 out of 5 stars
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WOW
- By Avid Reader and Listener on 07-09-13
By: Charlie LeDuff
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Dark Tide
- The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919
- By: Stephen Puleo
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 376
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 327
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 327
Around noon on January 15, 1919, a group of firefighters were playing cards in Boston's North End when they heard a tremendous crash. It was like, "a roaring surf," one of them said later. Like, "a runaway two-horse team smashing through a fence," said another. A third firefighter jumped up from his chair to look out a window - "Oh my God!" he shouted to the other men, "Run!" A 50-foot-tall steel tank filled with 2.3 million gallons of molasses had just collapsed on Boston's waterfront, disgorging its contents as a 15-foot-high wave of molasses that at its outset traveled at 35 miles an hour.
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3 out of 5 stars
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INTERESTING STORY - ABOUT 2x TOO LONG
- By The Louligan on 09-07-14
By: Stephen Puleo
What listeners say about The Winecoff Fire
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Taylor Wyss
- 10-13-23
Took some liberties
You can tell when the og author made some assumptions here and there. And that’s something I strongly dislike in documentaries. For the most part good but if your going to take liberties be upfront about it
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