Priest Hero in $100,000 School Fire
Leads 60 Students From
Blazing Building At
Herman, Pa.
No One Is Injured
Plans for Reconstruction
Studied as Boys Are
Sent to Homes.
HERMAN Pa. March 16 (1938)
A vigorous little priest with an Oxford accent led 60 boys to safety early today as fire swept the 52-year-old main hall of St. Fidelis seminary.
The students were asleep in the senior dormitory on the third floor as the flames roared upward from a workshop. Two students, awakened by smoke, shouted the alarm and awakened Father Victor Green.
Quietly, he ordered them to ring the alarm bell and arouse the other seniors. Clad in nightclothing and wrapped in blankets, the lads followed the priest down a fire escape at the rear of a new wing of the building.
Loss Set at $100 000
Sixty-six younger students quartered in the fireproof wing made their way out and stood shivering in the cold as firemen successfully checked the flames spreading, to other campus buildings.
College authorities said the blaze , caused $100 000 damage to the four-story “ Old College” and a study hall which the Capuchin fathers built with bricks which they had moulded by hand. The building housed laboratories, class rooms, bowling alleys, infirmary, library and the dormitory.
Cause Is Undetermined.
Father Bertrand Brookman of Cumberland, Md., 39 year-old director of the seminary who narrowly escaped being trapped, said he had “ no idea” how the blaze started. All the students and priests were out of the building before their shouts awakened Father Brookman. He recalled:
“ The smoke hit me and I stumbled blindly for a moment or two. I lost my sense of direction, [and] I finally felt the bannister and practically slid down.
“I groped around at the foot of the stairway and felt a pane of glass. I gave a push and fell through into open air.”
The school staff includes 19 priests, six laymen and nuns of the Order of Divine Providence.
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