Alumni members and friends, men and women, stood out on that campus all night. Some of them sobbed aloud as the walls started to crumble. The falmes got worsewhen they reached that old celo wall board in the Sisters' old cloister and it cought fire. The flames could be seen as far away as Butte.

Airplanes from Omaha ans Sioux City flew low to take television pictures. I don't know where all the people could possibly have come from, but the crowd stayed all night and there was nothing to do. No rescue operations were neccesary as no one was in the building and no one could go into the buldingto save anything but the crowd stayed--silently, symapthetacly.

The fireman said the solid oak floors in the new 1910 building slowed the fire and gave the fighters a chance to work. there was no wind, which prabably saved the wole blockThe rectory was evacualted. Monsignor is now getting helpless and so they took him via wheel chair to the hospital.

The fireman moved the Blessed Sacrament from the church and from our convent chapel, just in case a wind would arise and spread the conflagration

Last Saturday morning, Feb. 13, a $44,000 two hundred bed, civil defense hospital was placed in storage in the basement of the old building. All the material was put in the old kitchen, the little dining room and those basement storerooms. Completion of this installation took place on Monday, the day before the fire. You can make of that what you will, Monsignor O'Sullivan, when asked if the government could use the building for storage purposes, said, "You can use it at your own risk as the building is condemned." They took the chance was that fire coincidence? I'll never believe that it was. Or purely accidental? I suppose we will never know.

In the civil defense consignment there were two hundred hospital beds, 28 tanks of oxygen, all kinds of medicines, vaccines, alcohol, etc. The firemen risked their lives to get that oxygen out of there before the flames reached the storage room. They told us if the flames hit that oxygen ther would be an explosion big enough to destroy almost all of O'Neill.

Someone else, who apparently knows, says that oxygen is not an explosive, that it simply would have spread the flames. I'm glad that no one argued the point and that the oxygen was removed or maybe I wouldn't be writing this letter. The oxygen was the only part of the supplies saved. All the rest of the medicines, blood plasma and etc. had to go. Of course, what is $44,000 to Uncle Sam who spends billions and thinks nothing of it?

By 10 P.M. both buildings were burning furiously. All the firemen concentrated on saving what they could of the 1910 building. The old one was doomed. It was literally an inferno and we knew there would be no stopping the flames. The electricians cut off the electricity in our convent and in the school. They told us to move out as a safety measure. If those walls had fallen out and the burning embers touched any of those power lines in our back yard, there would be a mass execution as everybody was standing in the water running down from the fire hose.

so we moved over to the hospital. Unless the wind changed, our convent was not in danger, but we moved. You can't do much without water and electricity. Although there was no immediate danger of fire to the buildings there were firemen with hose on our convent, on the high school and on alert at St. Anthony's Hospital.