The Ice Show's Finale

A chorus line of 36 barelegged beauties on skates swirled in synchronized precision over the ice rink in Indianapolis' State Fairgrounds Coliseum. They wore sequined leotards and yellow-feathered headdresses, and they dipped and swooped together to the ricky-tick tempo of an 18-piece band playing Dixieland. Fireworks sparked near the roof girders, and a family-trade crowd of 4,320 oohed and aahed. This was the finale of the Holiday on Ice show's first night in Indianapolis--a Mardi Gras production number.

Before it ended, an explosion thundered through the auditorium. A 30-ft. wall of flame shot over a section of box seats and rinkside folding chairs. In an instant, the rink was littered with enormous chunks of concrete, shredded programs, crumpled popcorn boxes, splintered seats, twisted steel--and dozens of limp or painfully writhing bodies that lay in puddles of blood spreading over the ice. It took a moment for the horror to register. Then the gay chorus line broke in a scramble of skate blades and screams. A woman in the audience shrieked to her companion: "It's part of the show! It's got to be! It's got to be!" The band continued to play Dixieland.

The explosion, from a leaking gas tank in a commissary storeroom beneath the audience, had blasted a sheet of flame up through 128 of the Coliseum's choicest box seats, catapulting men and women--many still in their seats--in blazing arcs through the air. Slabs of concrete the size of small cars went up 50 ft., then slammed down on a crowded section of folding chairs below the box seats, crushing dozens and trapping many more in tons of debris.

Bleeding or dazed, some people wandered aimlessly out of the Coliseum. Some fled wildly across the ice, slipping and skidding as they tried to escape. Others clawed with their bare hands to drag away 500-lb. blocks of concrete that pinned people in the wreckage. The auditorium, brilliantly illuminated by spotlights, echoed with screams of the injured--some lying helplessly trapped beneath bodies of the dead. A man walked about asking everyone he saw, "Where's my kids? Where's my kids?"

Within minutes, a call went out for every ambulance within miles. Hospitals called in off-duty personnel. Hundreds of rescue workers descended on the Coliseum. Auto wreckers and a construction crane rumbled onto the ice rink, began lifting blocks of concrete to free the dead and the injured. Doctors and nurses, their clothing streaked with dried blood, worked feverishly. Others organized a makeshift morgue on the rink. Beneath gay red and green Chinese lanterns left over from the finale, men laid bodies on boards, covered them with blankets, tarpaulins and overcoats, and marked each with a curt description such as, "Young girl, sandy hair, blue eyes. Unidentified."

At week's end, the toll stood at 66 dead, 400 injured.

. . .

The same night, in Marietta, Ga., the town square was crowded with Halloween merrymakers. Terry Wayne Carter, 7, was among them--decked out as a devil and needing only a mask to make his costume complete. Terry and his father, Joe Ben Carter, walked hand in hand into Atherton's Drugstore to buy one. A few minutes later there was an explosion, probably caused by a basement gas leak. It shattered windows of stores near by, hurled a litter of Halloween masks, slivers of glass and pieces of concrete into the square. Terry, his father, and five other people died in the blast. Twenty-five others were injured.

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