Thomas Mayberry Hero of the Kirkwood Hotel Fire

The Kirkwood Hotel at the turn of the century

There were roughly 150 people in the Kirkwood Hotel in Des Moines when it caught fire early on April 5, 1929. Six people died in the inferno. A dozen more were hospitalized. Several jumped from fourth-floor windows trying to escape. They didn’t make it.

 

A night clerk told investigators he put out a small fire in a linen closet at 2:15 a.m. Forty-five minutes later, the fire was back. When he tried to reach it, the smoke stopped him.

 

Porter Thomas Mayberry turned in the alarm around 3 a.m. “I went back to wake people up,” he said. “Women and men were screaming and moaning, and the smoke was terrible.”

Thomas Mayberry, hero of the 
Kirkwood Hotel Fire

“We couldn’t see anything in the halls on account of the black smoke,” Mayberry said. “Sometimes we stumbled over bodies.”

 

Mayberry was credited with putting 20 people out of the burning structure.

 

Reporter Julia Carpenter arrived n the scene shortly after the fire started. She saw one young woman nearly jump from a third-floor window. A fireman caught her and held her in midair until others pulled her inside. A twelve-year-old girl climbed down a rope ladder on her own.

 

Police Sergeant Nelse Pastel told reporters, “I never want to see anything like this again. There was more agony and suffering in one night than most people see in a lifetime.”

 

Rumors later circulated about a wild party on the upper floors, but no one would confirm it.

 

The official damage estimate reached $300,000; $168,000 to the hotel alone, according to the Des Moines Tribune.