Hotel Polen fire
Hotel Polen before it was destroyed by fire
Date9 May 1977 (1977-05-09)
VenueHotel Polen
LocationAmsterdam, Netherlands
Coordinates52°22′20″N 4°53′33″E / 52.3721°N 4.8926°E / 52.3721; 4.8926
TypeFire
Deaths33
Non-fatal injuries21

The Hotel Polen fire occurred on 9 May 1977 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The conflagration destroyed the Hotel Polen (Hotel Poland), a five-story hotel in the centre of the city which had been built in 1891, as well as the furniture store on the ground level and a nearby bookstore. Many of the tourists staying at the hotel (of whom the majority were Swedes) jumped to their deaths trying to escape the flames. Upon their arrival, the fire department used a life net to help people escape, but not everyone could be saved. The incident resulted in 33 deaths and 21 severe injuries. The cause of the fire is unknown. In 1986 the Polish-born artist Ania Bien created a photographic installation based on the fire which compared it to the Holocaust.

The hotel was located between the Kalverstraat (no. 15–17) and the Rokin (no. 14), near the present day Madame Tussauds. Its place is now occupied by the Rokin Plaza, originally an office building, which today houses several fashion shops.

Background

In the beginning of the 16th century, there was an inn on the site where the Hotel Polen was later located.[1] At the end of the 18th century, the Poolsche Koffiehuis (Polish Coffee House) was established, which began offering guest accommodation in 1857.[2] In 1891, after the adjacent space on the Rokin was bought, the Hotel Polen was established by the Maatschappij tot Exploitatie van het Poolsche Koffiehuis (Polish Coffee House Society),[2] and a building was constructed there which was designed by Eduard Cuypers, a cousin of the better known architect Pierre Cuypers who had designed the Amsterdam Central Station and the Rijksmuseum.[3] The hotel was five stories high and a café-restaurant was opened on the ground level.[1]

The Hotel Polen was once known as a fashionable place to stay.[4] The café-restaurant was closed at the end of 1974 and its location was subsequently rented to the furniture store Inden.[1] The hotel remained open as a part of the Krasnapolsky Concern.[5]

The building, including the load-bearing elements, was constructed of wood.[6] It had 94 rooms.[7] There were 10 fire extinguishers and 11 fire hoses in the hotel. Only a few escape routes had proper emergency lighting and directions to the emergency exits,[8] and the hotel was also not on a hotline with the emergency centre of the fire department.[9] The building had been inspected by the fire department, first in February 1976, and later in the beginning of 1977, after which the hotel's management was notified in writing that there were severe fire safety defects. A list of improvements which the hotel should implement included complying with the building regulations and the regulations for residence facilities.[10][11]

Fire

Firefighting on the Rokin side

On the night of Sunday 8 May to Monday 9 May 1977, about 100 people were staying in the Hotel Polen,[12][13] including a large group of Swedish tourists.[14] At about 6:20 am, the hotel staff were preparing for breakfast service when one of them noticed smoke that seemed to be coming from the freight elevator (which had not been used since the café-restaurant on the ground floor had closed the previous evening). The night porter was alerted. Contrary to instructions, he did not call the fire department immediately; instead, he poured some buckets of water into the shaft, in an attempt to subdue the fire. By the time he decided to call the fire department, the hotel was filling with smoke. He was unable to reach the phone at the front desk because the fire had already reached it; he then ran outside, where he stopped the driver of a laundry truck serving the hotel, and instructed him to drive to the Hotel Krasnapolsky to warn them[15] and to call the fire department.[5]

By 6:30 am the fire was spreading very quickly through the building,[16] although from the outside nothing was visible. Because of the wooden construction, the building was soon engulfed in flames. The guests on the top level could not escape and stood panicked in the windows. When the fire reached some guests' rooms, they leapt out of the windows to escape. At 6:42 the first large fire engine arrived. On the street lay several dead and injured people who had jumped from their hotel room windows. On the lower floor, the furniture store Inden was also on fire. The fire fighters tried to unfold a life net in the Papenbroekssteeg, an alley which runs between the Rokin and the Kalverstraat,[17] but it was too narrow.[18]

At the front of the hotel, in the Rokin, rescue operations were also hampered. There were so many people standing on the window ledges screaming that the fire fighters did not know whom to save first. Time was also lost because some people threw their luggage into the life net and then jumped into it themselves, causing injuries.[18] Some people fell to the side of the net and were severely injured.[19] Just before 7:00 am the part of the hotel facing the Kalverstraat collapsed.[20] The burning debris landed on the fire engine there, and the fire fighters barely escaped to safety. The nearby book store was also burned out,[21] and fires broke out in several buildings on the other side of the Kalverstraat; these were quickly brought under control.[20]

At about 8:30 am the wooden construction of the main part of the building also burned through and collapsed.[20] Although there were still people in the building and more people were lying around the building severely injured, the fire fighters decided to withdraw.[18] The smoking debris was extinguished, and at 9:30 am the fire was declared under control.[22] The building's collapse left a gaping hole; of the hotel, the furniture store and the book store, almost nothing remained.

Thirty-three people were killed:[23] 32 tourists (17 of them Swedes)[24] and the occupant of the apartment above the book store. Eighteen charred bodies were recovered from the debris. Thirteen people who had jumped from windows either died or were severely injured. Among the dead was the celebrated German concert musician and composer Walter Kraft, longtime organist of St. Mary's Church, Lübeck. Of the 57 people who were injured, 21 had severe injuries. Two guests from the United States escaped without injury.[25]

Possible cause

The Rokin Plaza which now stands at the former location of Hotel Polen

The cause of the fire could not be determined with certainty.[12] One possibility is that a fire smouldered in the furniture store Inden under the hotel, and the opening of the elevator shaft in the morning provided an inflow of oxygen, causing the fire to spread.[26] There is also a theory that the fire was set by burglars who tried to cover their tracks;[27] however, there was no evidence of a burglary.[26]

The high number of casualties was a consequence of the wooden construction of the building,[6] the poorly marked escape routes[8] and the shortage of safety equipment.[11]

Cultural impact

Polish-born artist Ania Bien produced a photographic art installation in 1986 called Hotel Polen. She fabricated 18 replicas of the hotel's menu stands, and used them to display photographs alluding to the Holocaust. David Levi-Strauss wrote that Bien's art piece is a "polysemous work of absence, in which what happens between images is the most important"[28] The work was displayed at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1987 and at the Amsterdams Historisch Museum in 1988.[29]

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Rapport Brand Hotel Polen Amsterdam" (PDF) (in Dutch). Nationaal Brandweer Documentatie Centrum. December 1977. p. 5. Archived from the original (PDF) on 14 July 2016. Retrieved 11 December 2011.
  2. 1 2 (in Dutch) Hotel Polen Archived 6 April 2012 at the Wayback Machine on the website of the Netherlands Architecture Institute (archive)
  3. ↑ (in Dutch) *H. Berens (ed.), P.J.H. Cuypers (1827–1921). Het complete werk, Rotterdam, Nederlands Architectuurinstituut, 2007.
  4. ↑ "Fire Races Through Dutch Hotel; 6 Die, 2 in Leaps From Windows". Los Angeles Times. 10 May 1977. Retrieved 10 December 2011. (behind paywall)
  5. 1 2 "In Europa+ 1977: Brand in hotel Polen". Geschiedenis 24 (in Dutch). VPRO. 11 February 2009. Archived from the original on 12 January 2012. Retrieved 9 January 2012.
  6. 1 2 (in Dutch) Rapport Brand Hotel Polen Amsterdam. p. 6
  7. ↑ Rapport Brand Hotel Polen Amsterdam. pp. 52–56
  8. 1 2 (in Dutch) Rapport Brand Hotel Polen Amsterdam. p. 9
  9. ↑ (in Dutch) Rapport Brand Hotel Polen Amsterdam. p. 10
  10. ↑ (in Dutch) Rapport Brand Hotel Polen Amsterdam. p. 11
  11. 1 2 "Rapport brandweer: Hotel Polen was onvoldoende beveiligd". De Waarheid (in Dutch). 16 December 1977. p. 3. Archived from the original on 11 June 2012. Retrieved 10 December 2011.
  12. 1 2 "Oorzaak brand bij Polen niet te achterhalen". De Waarheid (in Dutch). 12 December 1977. p. 1. Archived from the original on 3 February 2016. Retrieved 10 December 2011.
  13. ↑ "12 Killed in Hotel Blaze". Nashua Telegraph. 9 May 1977. Archived from the original on 3 February 2016. Retrieved 10 December 2011.
  14. ↑ "26 now feared dead in Dutch hotel blaze". Windsor Star. 10 May 1977. Archived from the original on 3 February 2016. Retrieved 10 December 2011.
  15. ↑ (in Dutch) Rapport Brand Hotel Polen Amsterdam. p. 13
  16. ↑ "Amsterdam fire kills 12". Telegraph Herald. 9 May 1977. Archived from the original on 3 February 2016. Retrieved 10 December 2011.
  17. ↑ (in Dutch) Rapport Brand Hotel Polen Amsterdam. p. 50
  18. 1 2 3 (in Dutch) Rapport Brand Hotel Polen Amsterdam. p. 21
  19. ↑ "Hotelbrand Amsterdam: al 12 doden" (PDF). Utrechts Nieuwsblad (in Dutch). 9 May 1977. p. 1. Archived from the original (PDF) on 9 January 2012. Retrieved 11 December 2011.
  20. 1 2 3 (in Dutch) Rapport Brand Hotel Polen Amsterdam. p. 16
  21. ↑ "12 killed in hotel fire". The Age. Australia. 10 May 1977. Archived from the original on 3 February 2016. Retrieved 10 December 2011.
  22. ↑ (in Dutch) Rapport Brand Hotel Polen Amsterdam. p. 17
  23. ↑ "Onderzoek brand hotel Polen afgesloten". De Waarheid (in Dutch). 6 September 1977. p. 7. Archived from the original on 11 June 2012. Retrieved 10 December 2011.
  24. ↑ "Den värsta brandkatastrofen i Sverige" [The worst fire disaster in Sweden]. Aftonbladet (in Swedish). TT. 30 October 1998. Archived from the original on 9 January 2012. Retrieved 5 January 2012.
  25. ↑ "Hotel Fire Death Toll Hits 13". Oxnard Press-Courier. 11 May 1977. Archived from the original on 3 February 2016. Retrieved 10 December 2011.
  26. 1 2 (in Dutch) Rapport Brand Hotel Polen Amsterdam. p. 44
  27. ↑ "Nine known dead in fire". Calgary Herald. 10 May 1977. Archived from the original on 3 February 2016. Retrieved 10 December 2011.
  28. ↑ Baird, Daniel (December 2003). "Between The Eyes: Essays on Photography and Politics". Brooklyn Rail. Archived from the original on 14 March 2013. Retrieved 10 December 2011.
  29. ↑ "Hotel Polen // Ania Bien". Smithsonian Institution Research Information System. Smithsonian Institution Libraries. Archived from the original on 25 April 2012. Retrieved 10 December 2011.

Further reading

  • (in Dutch) Broekman, Jan. (1985) Grote branden in de Lage Landen. Lelystad : Koninklijke Vermande. ISBN 90-6040-767-9.
  • (in Dutch) Duin, Menno Joost van. (1992) Van rampen leren : een vergelijkend onderzoek naar de lessen uit spoorwegongevallen, hotelbranden en industriële ongelukken. The Hague: Haagse Drukkerij en Uitgeversmij. ISBN 90-71504-15-8.
  • (in Dutch) PS-Produkties (Leeuwarden) (2006) 30 jaar Brand en Ontij. Den Haag: Sdu Uitgevers. ISBN 90-12-11772-0.
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