Episode 551: Happy Land Social Club Arson

On the evening of March 24, 1990, nearly one hundred patrons gathered to celebrate Carnivale at the Happy Land Social Club, a small informal night club in the Bronx that catered to a mostly Honduran clientele. The evening took a deadly turn when, around 3:30 am, an explosion of fire roared up the stairway leading to the second-floor club, blocking the only exit from the building and trapping the patrons in a room rapidly filling with toxic smoke and fire. It’s unknown how many patrons managed to escape the fire, but by the time the fire department had extinguished the blaze, eighty-seven people were dead. Thank you to the amazing Dave White of Bring Me the Axe Podcast for research! ReferencesBarbanel, Josh. 1990. "Bronx social club's sublease: How a firetrap skirted the line."