Hobart, OK Babb's Switch School House Fire, Dec 1924

Christmas Fire in Oklahoma School House Claims Lives of 33 With Five Missing.

Most of Victims Burned Beyond Recognition in Blaze Which Destroys School Building in Oklahoma Town During Holiday Celebration; Efforts to Identify Victims of Fire Are Futile in Many Cases.

GRIEF STRICKEN LINE SEARCHES MORGUE.

(By The Associated Press)
HOBART, Okla., Dec. 25 – With the identification of the last victim established the rechecked death list in the Christmas Eve fire at the Babb Switch rural school, stood at 33 tonight. Twenty injured persons are still confined in two hospitals. One is expected to die and two others are in a critical condition. Funeral services for 16 of the dead will be held tomorrow.

(By The Associated Press)
HOBART, Okla., Dec. 25 – With thirty-two bodies, most of them burned beyond recognition lying in a temporary morgue in two store buildings and five others listed as missing as a result of a Christmas eve fire at the district school house at Babb's Switch, seven miles from here. Hobart citizens tonight were continuing their efforts to identify the dead.

At a mass meeting today called by Mayor F. E. Gillespie, committees were named to look after every detail of the sad task and the work was going forward systematically.

It has been decided to bury all the unidentified in a large grave in the Hobart cemetery and late today a crew of men broke the snow that blanketed the burial ground to throw up a long trench of earth.
Early tonight only ten of the dead had been identified, despite the fact that the morgue was early thrown open to the public. A steady procession of grief stricken relatives filed all day long between the shrouded forms, but so terribly had they been burned that it was impossible in most cases to mark the features of loved ones.

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