Chase Shustack

But this only resulted in a crush of humanity.

100 men, women, and children caught between the unyielding doors and the desperate mass that surged like dumb cattle away from the fire.

For the unfortunate people too slow, they faced the impossible options of scrambling through their neighbors or returning to the gym to find a different exit.

However, the rushing flames moved shockingly fast, eating up the varnished floor as they surrounded the screaming crowd.

For those between the doors and the crowd, they had no other option.

A few of them were thrown so hard against the unmovable barriers that they were knocked unconscious, their limp bodies swept up by the frenzy and dragged underfoot, where they disappeared beneath dozens of kicking, stomping feet.

Smaller individuals, like children, were pried loose from their parents' hands and pulled into the crowd, often stumbling or thrown against the walls as larger bodies pushed their way through.

Eventually, even turning around in the cramped corridor was no longer possible, as the crowd had compacted itself into a tangled mess of limbs and heads falling, stepping, and kicking against each other.

Turning back wasn't an option anyway.

By the time the fire department was alerted, the flames had torn through the gym with horrific speed, enough to launch out of the large windows into the surrounding area.

Using their tools, the firemen attempted to pry open the doors to free the trapped crowd.

But to their shock,

Each tool was useless.

From the jaws of life to simple pry bars, nothing even budged the double doors.

It was only when, as a last resort, a hook truck ripped the doors directly out of the wall that anyone, civilian or fireman, could enter or exit the burning building.

The Saturday dusk was filled with screams and alarms until around midnight, until the fire had finally been smothered.

It's debatable what horrified and disgusted the good townspeople of Siskin the most.

Was it the scene captured in the Siskin Gazette the very next day, depicting a pile of charred corpses crushed into a single roasted mass, their faces still pressed up against the sealed entrance doors?

Was it the reality that entire families, totaling up to 96 individuals, were wiped out in a single night?

Or it might have been the fact that, much like at the shopping center, cans of gasoline were found scattered in a clearing behind the school.