Our Lady of the Angels School fire building as in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. However, its interior was made almost entirely of combustible wooden materials—stairs, walls, floors, doors, roof, and cellulose fiber ceiling tiles. Moreover, the floors had been coated many times with both flammable varnish and petroleum-based waxes. There were only two (unmarked) fire alarm switches in the entire school, and they were both in the south wing. There were four fire extinguishers in the north wing, each mounted off the floor, out of reach for many adults and virtually all of the children. The single fire escape was near one end of the
Monument to the Great Fire of London Tamdiu Patravit Nondum Restingvitur" (but Popish frenzy, which wrought such horrors, is not yet quenched) were added to the end of the inscription on the orders of the Court of Aldermen in 1681 during the foment of the Popish Plot. Text on the east side originally falsely blamed Roman Catholics for the fire ("burning of this protestant city, begun and carried on by the treachery and malice of the popish faction"), which prompted Alexander Pope (himself a Catholic) to say of the area: <poem>Where London's column, pointing at the skies, Like a tall bully, lifts the head, and lies. –