Several people managed to squeeze through, some still burning when they reached the ground below.
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Others saw the floor to ceiling windows as the most promising means of escape despite the fact that there were safety bars on the windows with a 14-inch gap between them to prevent dancers from breaking through the glass. Rasmussen immediately led some twenty patrons out of the back exit to the roof, where the group could access a neighbouring building's roof and climb down to the ground floor. Boggs opened the door to find the front staircase engulfed in flames, along with the smell of lighter fluid. Īt 7:56PM, a buzzer from downstairs sounded, and bartender Buddy Rasmussen, an Air Force veteran, asked Luther Boggs to answer the door, anticipating a taxi cab driver. After the drink special ended, about 60 to 90 patrons remained they listened to pianist George Steven “Bud” Matyi perform and discussed an upcoming MCC fundraiser for the local Crippled Children's Hospital. That night's beer bust, from 5:00 pm to 7:00 pm, attracted approximately 110 patrons. On Sunday evening, June 24, 1973, the regular "beer bust" drink special attracted its usual blue-collar gay crowd to the UpStairs Lounge. The fire was the third arson attack to affect the MCC, following a January 27, 1973, arson at the church's headquarters in Los Angeles (resulting in the destruction and collapse of the building with no injuries) and another 1973 arson at an MCC church in Nashville, Tennessee (also with complete destruction of the church and its furnishings but no injuries). The MCC was the United States' first national gay Christian fellowship, founded in Los Angeles in 1968 the local congregation had held services in the UpStairs Lounge's theatre for a while. Members of the Metropolitan Community Church, a pro-LGBT Protestant denomination, were there after service.
The club was located on the second floor of a three-story building at the corner of Chartres and Iberville Streets. Until the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting, in which 49 people were murdered, the UpStairs Lounge arson attack was the deadliest attack on a gay club in U.S. No evidence has ever been found that the arson was motivated by hatred or overt homophobia. The primary suspect, a gay man with a history of psychiatric impairment named Roger Dale Nunez who had been ejected from the bar earlier in the day, was never charged and killed himself in November 1974. The official cause is still listed as "undetermined origin". Thirty-two people died and at least fifteen were injured as a result of fire or smoke inhalation. The UpStairs Lounge arson attack, sometimes called the UpStairs Lounge Fire, occurred on June 24, 1973, at a gay bar called the UpStairs (or Up Stairs) Lounge located on the second floor of the three-story building at 604 Iberville Street in New Orleans, Louisiana, in the United States.
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