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Betty Lou Oliver • Vol. 19: #28 • (7-9-2023) Tidbits of Coachella Valley
BETTY LOU OLIVER
• Betty Lou Oliver was 20 when she reported to work at New Yorkʼs Empire State Building on July 28, 1945. She was an elevator operator in what was, at the time, the world’s tallest building.
• Betty was in charge of Elevator #6, one of the 73 elevators in the building, and it was her last day on this job. As a newlywed, she began working there when her husband went off to war, but now he was coming home. They had plans to move to Fort Smith, Arkansas.
• That same day, Air Force Lieutenant Colonel William Franklin Smith was piloting a B-25 Mitchell bomber. He had flown many combat missions during the war in Europe. Today he was on a routine mission, flying the ten-ton bomber at 225 mph from Massachusetts to New York. Besides the pilot, there were two other crew members on board.
• It was a very foggy morning. Smith radioed La Guardia tower that he was nearing the airport for landing, only to be told visibility was near zero and he was advised to divert instead to nearby Newark airport in New Jersey. But he was determined to continue to La Guardia. He became disoriented in the dense fog, banking right instead of left as he flew by the Chrysler Building. He could not see the 1,250 foot Empire State Building looming above his altitude and directly in his flight path.
• At 9:30 a.m., his plane impacted the north side of the Empire State Building between the 78th and 80th floors. Spilled fuel immediately burst into flame, igniting the building and engulfing the plane. All three on the bomber died, along with 11 people inside the building.
• Both wings sheared off and tumbled to the streets below, scattering debris as far as five blocks away. One of the engines broke loose and tore into the building, crashing to the bottom of an elevator shaft. Another engine ripped all the way through the building, crashing through seven walls, bursting out the south side and landing on the roof of a 17-story building next door. On its way through, that engine destroyed three elevators.
• Betty Lou was on the 80th floor of the 102-floor building when the plane crashed. She was thrown out of the elevator, burned by the fireball. Rescuers loaded her into an undamaged elevator, expecting ambulance attendants to meet her in the lobby at street level. Suddenly, the damaged elevator cables snapped, and the injured Betty Lou Oliver plummeted 75 floors to the basement, a distance of over 900 feet.
• Several things worked in her favor that day. First, the severed cables below her elevator tumbled to the bottom of the shaft, landing in a spring-like coil that helped cushion the hard landing. Second, the elevator shaft was nearly airtight, and the falling cab compressed the air as it plummeted downwards, helping to slow the fall.
• Still, Betty landed with enough force to break her legs, pelvis, neck, and spine. Still remaining conscious, she had to wait several hours for rescuers to cut her out of the wreckage.
• After four months in the hospital, Betty Lou was finally dismissed and able to walk, with the aid of braces and crutches, five feet from her wheelchair to an awaiting car. A month later, she returned to the Empire State Building taking an elevator all the way to the top, where she was celebrated for her bravery.
• Soon Betty Lou Oliver and her husband moved to Fort Smith, Arkansas, as planned. He became a service manager and she raised three kids. When she died in 1999 at the age of 74, she left seven grandchildren behind and was buried in Fort Smith next to her husband.
• The crash killed 14 people and injured about 25. Because the incident had occured on a rainy Saturday, few people were in the Empire State Building at the time, and few were on the streets when debris fell. Firemen controlled the fire within an hour, which still retains the record for the highest structural fire to be controlled by firefighters. Most of the building, which escaped structural damage, was open for business by Monday morning.
• Betty Lou’s episode still holds the world record for the longest elevator fall ever survived. □
