Cornell Alumni News - eCommons@Cornell - Cornell University

Fireman on ladder searches for victims in Res Club fire.
Basement hallway provided exit. No one in cellar died.
The University
• Eight students and an assistant professor
died of asphyxiation in a pre-dawn
fire April 5 at the university-owned Cornell
Heights Residential Club. Fire in
the basement floor produced a stifling
smoke that filled the building and caused
the deaths. Several persons suffered
burns. Four students were hospitalized,
along with several neighbors and rescue
personnel. Some sixty residents of the
thirteen-year-old building escaped alive.
The basement and first floors of the
building were home for the Six-Year
A Trasic Fire
PhD program. Three of the dead and
one of the injured were in the PhD program
[NEWS, October 1966], as was the
professor who died, John A. Finch, PhD
'64, English, one of three resident faculty
advisers. Upperclass and graduatestudent
women occupied the top floor.
The dead students are: Martha Beck
'69; Meimei Cheng, Grad; Peter Cooch
'69; Carol Lynn Kurtz, Grad; Anne Mc-
Cormic '67; Jeffrey W. Smith '69; Jennie
Zu-Wei Sun '68; and Johanna Christina
Wallden, Grad.
Professor Finch first reported the smell
of smoke to the university Safety Division
shortly after 4 a.m. Fire companies
arrived on the scene within minutes from
Ithaca and the Village of Cayuga
Heights, in which the building is located,
just off Triphammer Road across from
the old Ithaca Country Club golf course.
More than a week after the fire, there
was still no clear picture of how or
where the fire started, or how it came
to produce the great volume of acrid
smoke that was to prove fatal to nine
persons. Some residents fled through
hallways, but many made their way out
of windows or were rescued through
windows by firemen and others.
Professor Finch, who was in charge
of the Six-Year PhD group in the building,
was one of several persons identified
as heroes in rescue efforts. He
went back into the building, was later
overcome by smoke and died in the
Broken windows allowed escape from the 13-year-old Cornell Heights Residential Club.—Ithaca Journal photos Ralph Baker