War Of The Worlds radio broadcast, Quito (1949)

It seems fairly certain that when Orson Welles broadcast his version of The War Of The Worlds in 1938, the only real injuries sustained were some bruised egos and perhaps the odd sprained ankle. The newspapers of the time made every effort to talk up the damage and with the passage of time, it's easy to get carried away and imagine fatalities, but when you think about it calmly and rationally, it hardly seems credible to believe that anyone might lose their life over a fake radio broadcast, yet this is precisely what did happen a decade later, when an Ecuadorian radio station created their very own lethal version of The War Of The Worlds.

The year was 1949, the date February 12th and the place Quito, the capital city of Ecuador and home at the time to some 250,000 people. By the end of that evening, the local newspaper offices would be burnt to the ground and at least six people would be dead at the hands of an enraged mob. But how did this terrible tragedy come about? The story begins at Radio Quito with the station's director of art, Leonardo Paez and the dramatic director Alfredo Vergara Morales (AKA Eduardo Alcaraz.) They were looking for an interesting drama that would put their station on the map, and having heard of the Welles broadcast decided to mount their own localised version. You would think the very idea might have triggered alarm bells, but apparently they actually kept their plans from the station management and made no pre-announcements on air of their intentions.

Just like America in 1938, the principle form of entertainment and information for Ecuadorians was the radio, and doubtless the same sense of naïve trust existed amongst the listeners. Paez and Morales took full advantage of this, and then some. Unlike the Mercury Theatre broadcast, which was a scheduled program (and so could be looked up in the newspaper listings), the Quito War Of The Worlds broadcast hijacked a regular music program without warning. In the middle of an Ecuadorian folk song, Listeners were suddenly alerted to an urgent piece of news that Martians were reported to have landed some 20 miles from Quito.

Just as Welles and his players had constructed a realistic invasion by utilising real place names and living persons, so too did Paez and Morales. To begin with, they chose a small rural city south of Quito called Latacunga, and casually destroyed it. Listeners were next told that the Martians were advancing on the capital in the form of a large cloud. Crowds rushed out into the streets and in the heightened atmosphere of excitement, agitated imaginations transformed ordinary clouds into this ominous object. The airbase of Marisal Sucre was next to be swept aside by the Martians, along with a northwestern parish of Quito near the airport called Cotocallao. The reporter was then heard to collapse as gas swept his position. Familiar voices (impersonated by actors) added to the panic. The Interior Minister urged calm and the Mayor of Quito was heard to announce "people of Quito, let us defend our city. Our women and children must go out into the surrounding heights to leave the men free for action and combat." A priest was heard asking for divine forgiveness as church bells tolled and then from atop the La Previsora tower (the highest point in Quito) came a terrifying description of a monster engulfed in plumes of fire and smoke that was advancing from the north.

In another weird parallel to the Orson Welles broadcast, some listeners dismissed the idea that Martians were invading, and instead thought neighbouring Peru, with whom a great deal of enmity had festered due to border disputes, (three wars have been fought since 1941) was the aggressor. Others blamed the Soviet Union. Panic was now well and truly engulfing Quito and surrounding areas. Churches opened their doors to the terrified population who were pouring from their homes in their nightclothes and running about the streets in terror. One priest is said to have conducted an open air mass absolution of sins such were the overwhelming number of supplicants wishing to make peace with their God.

At last the station staff realised just what was happening in the streets. A belated admission and plea for calm was broadcast, which is when things got really serious. Up until this moment, no one appears to have been seriously hurt, but now a great many people in Quito were acutely aware they had been cruelly fooled, and were looking for something or someone to vent their fury upon. El Comercio, the largest and most respected paper in the country, owned radio Quito and the station was housed in the same building as the newspaper. It was to this location that the mob advanced, and in what might have seemed an ironic act by the crowd, set fire to copies of the El Comercio newspaper and hurled these (and other objects) at the building. The main entrance was blocked and a fire swiftly broke out. Some of the besieged staff of 100 people escaped from a rear exit, but many were trapped on the third floor and were forced in some cases to leap from windows. Others attempted to form human chains from the upper floors but many fell. The figures for the eventual death toll vary between about 6 and 20, but doubtless it was a terrifying night with very real fatalities and some pretty despicable acts. It is said that the mob beat one of the four policemen who arrived on the scene and removed fire hydrants in order to thwart efforts to extinguish the blaze.

As the building burned, Army units drove tanks through the streets and fired tear gas to disperse the crowds, but help was late coming, as in the most deadly twist of the night, much of the cities emergency services had actually been dispatched to Cotocallao to join the battle against the Martians. Eventually order was restored, but the El Comercio building was severely damaged, with an estimated repair bill of some $350,000 dollars. Alongside the loss of life, much of the equipment for the station and presses for the paper had been destroyed.

In the aftermath, the defence minister was tasked with handling the investigation and over the next few days 21 arrests were made, both of rioters and station staff. Paez and Morales were amongst those indicted, but it appears only Morales was found. Paez had fled and despite a search was not to be found. With his colleague (and co-conspirator?) gone, Morales claimed that Paez had been the one who had demanded the broadcast be kept a surprise, and had even locked the actors in the studio to maintain the illusion, which if true, seems to suggest that he might have expected, and indeed even hoped for the reaction he got, though it hardly seems likely that he planned on people dying. It does seem however that he had stoked the fires in a premeditated way, since it was alleged that he had planted stories in local newspapers about flying saucers in the weeks leading up to the broadcast.

There seems to be no record available of the outcome of any trials, if indeed any took place and El Comercio was quickly back in business, but for a while the people of Quito had an embarrassing new nickname amongst their fellow citizens, The Martians, or Los Mercian's.

See also in:

Radio

1926 Broadcasting The Barricades, Ronald Knox. An amazing precursor to the Orson Welles broadcast from England in which people became convinced the revolution had begun

1938 The War Of The Worlds by Orson Welles. The infamous radio broadcast that panicked America on Halloween night.

1944 The War Of The Worlds. Santiago in Chile suffers a major panic when the Welles broadcast is remade to terrifying effect

1950 / 1967 The War Of The Worlds. The first BBC adaptation of The War Of The Worlds in 1950 was followed by another in 1967.