During an apartment fire on Marlborough Street, a nineteen-year-old and her two-year-old niece and goddaughter are thrown from a fire escape that is falling down.
They waited with firefighter Robert O’Neil for a ladder to come and get them. The firefighter climbed up the rescue ladder, but the fire escape gave way and they fell to the earth five storeys below.
The woman died, but the infant lived because the woman’s body broke her fall. It’s sad how quickly things went from hope of rescue to a terrible plummet.
The picture, which is one of a sequence, depicts 19-year-old Diana Bryant and her 2-year-old goddaughter Tiare Jones tumbling from the fire escape of a burning apartment building on Marlborough Street in Boston on July 22, 1975.
The fire escape on the fifth floor fell apart while a turntable ladder on a fire engine was being raised to pick up the two people at a height of around 50 feet (15 metres).
The picture was captured with a motorised camera, and it also shows potted plants tumbling.
There are further pictures in the sequence that show Bryant and Jones waiting for a turntable ladder and the moment the fire escape fell down with both victims on it.
Photographer Stanley Forman took the “Fire Escape Collapse” images. He said that the accident was like this:
The date was July 22, 1975. It was almost time for me to depart the Boston Herald offices for the day. Someone called to say there was a fire in one of the city’s oldest Victorian row buildings.
I ran to the house and followed one of the fire trucks to the flames. They were calling for a ladder truck on the way there because there were people stuck in the building on the fire escape. I fled to the back of the building.
I went to the back of the building, and when I looked up, I saw a woman and a child on the fire escape. They were leaning as far away from the building as they could since the fire was so hot behind them.
In the meantime, Bob O’Neil, a firefighter, had gone up to the roof of the building and observed the two people on the fire escape. He climbed down the fire escape to save them.
I got into a position where I could take a picture of what I believed was going to be a normal rescue.
The ladder climbed up to get them; they were about 50 feet (15 metres) high. Mr. O’Neill had just told Diana Bryant that he was going to climb the ladder and asked her to give him the baby.
When Mr. O’Neil reached for the ladder, the fire escape suddenly gave way.
I was taking pictures of them as they fell, and then I turned away. I realised what was going on and didn’t want to see them fall. I can vividly remember spinning around and shaking.
I wouldn’t have seen them hit the ground because they dropped behind a fence where the dumpsters were.
I didn’t see them when I turned back, but I did see the firefighter still holding onto the ladder with one arm, like a monkey, with all of his gear.
He climbed back up the fire escape to get to safety. They say the woman caught the toddler before he fell. That night, the woman died.
The picture won the 1976 Pulitzer Prise for Spot News Photography and the World Press Photo of the Year award.
The Boston Herald was the first newspaper to publish it, and then it was published in newspapers all around the world. People didn’t like it.
People said that the media had invaded Diana Bryant’s private and were only interested in making things more exciting.
The picture also made Boston officials change the laws about how safe fire escapes should be. Fire safety groups around the country used the picture to encourage similar work in other cities.
(Photo credit: Stanley Forman).
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