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Pink Flamingo Productions
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A personal perspective on the fire.

They say a different part of oneself emerges during an emergency, that people create in a moment bonds that last a lifetime. On Christmas Day 1987 The Pink Flamingos were born from a fire…

Leading up to the fire…
By the second year of building the center was 95% done- Dec 1987. A celebration party was planned for Christmas Day. The month saw all the businesses consolidated to the building as well as all residences. Printing presses were moved and set-up as well as a full state of the art recording studio, a 500 square foot graphics suite, a commercial kitchen and a 16’ high Christmas Tree. Huge 8’ stained glass panels were installed in the main room’s 2 story high vaulted ceiling. Over 40 life-sized puppets, representing years of work, were brought into the main rehearsal room. And although our policy has always been to not accept donations, we accepted a gift of 12 turkeys for the Christmas dinner.

Facts of the fire.
It started around 4pm Christmas Day and lasted until roughly 11pm.
It was caused by a manufacturing fault in a furnace pipe.
Three chords of wood had been brought in downstairs the day before.
It lasted through a snowstorm.
The first fire truck broke down turning onto the road. It blocked the rest of the fire trucks from getting to the fire for well over an hour.
Nothing was saved.
No one was hurt.

Here are my random memories…
I remember people running by me on the stairwell but I’m staring at a window I’d hung only a couple weeks before, it’s smashed in to let smoke escape, my shocked face is reflected in the edges. I remember Dan, John and I desperately trying to break through a wall with a sledgehammer. I remember hours later I’m so cold I can’t feel my arms, legs or hands- it’s snowing and dark, and I’m in a soaked t-shirt. By firelight I’m trying to tip a cup of coffee over my fingers to get them to move again.
I remember using up three fire extinguishers. I see myself throwing the third emptied fire extinguisher in frustration.
I see neighbors racing to shut off the propane tank before it explodes.
I see a fireman looking at me and I can’t seem to convince him to move any faster- he just keeps telling me they can’t connect to any water for at least an hour…
And as I run back through thick clouds of orange glowing smoke I see people sitting on couches in the main room, watching- how can they breathe? What are they doing! I go to pull them out- and realize they are puppets! Life size, life like. Friends we had created over years. Unbeknownst to me someone had brought them from storage that day. 40 of them lined the room on couches ready for the evening’s festivities. As I turn I see the most enormous Christmas Tree I’ve ever seen with more brightly wrapped presents then I thought possible- then smoke swallows it. As I run out of the room I look back through the shifting clouds of smoke; and there, just for a moment, is revealed a row of attentive puppets- Egyptian Heroes and Gods from a production of Isis and Osiris- they are not upset, in fact they are quite collected and composed waiting to see what will happen next. I wonder if I can manage the same…

And finally- I remember sitting with everyone, hours and hours later, on a friend’s floor. What to do next? That’s when someone got the crazy notion of a “show-band” mixed with theatre. That’s when we could have sunk in shock and disbelief. And that’s when I learned that in Egyptian mythology the Pink Flamingo is akin to the Phoenix rising from the ashes.

How did The Pink Flamingos get their name? It happened after the fire. Yes, we agreed, let’s be a show-band, let’s travel as far as we can go and come back, let’s meet people, let’s live- why else are we here… Pink Flamingos? I think that would be a great name for whatever happens next…
Chris