Today in Fire History 10/19

On 10/19/1857 “Chicago (Illinois) experienced one of its first fire disasters at a five-story brick building at 109-11 South Water Street, between Clark and Dearborn Streets. The building housed a brothel, and according to most accounts, the fire began after someone knocked over a lamp. No lives were lost in this building, but the flames spread rapidly to several stores, warehouses, and rooming houses in the city’s central business district. Before the fire was under control, twenty-three lives were lost, including ten firefighters, and property valued at $700,000 was destroyed. The first firefighter to die had been standing on the roof of a wholesale store, attempting to get water on one of the adjacent buildings, when its outer walls buckled from intense heat and collapsed. Several other merchants and firefighters were later killed attempting to salvage goods from a building whose roof and upper floors had also collapsed and buried them. According to the Chicago Democrat, the fire was started by “drunken clerks” who had been “carousing with a lot of abandoned women.” As the fire spread, the paper reported, a half-nude woman “leaped from a second-story window into the arms of a gallant firefighter.” Despite this praise, the damage and deaths exposed the inadequacy of an all-volunteer fire department in a rapidly growing city. A coroner’s inquest revealed that, along with a lack of water pressure, Engines 6 and 10 had lost their hose before reaching the scene, and that neither company had repaired or replaced additional hoses damaged at a muster the week before, in which volunteers had competed for a coveted silver speaking trumpet. It was also shown that many of the volunteers were drifters from other cities drawn to firehouses as convenient places to sleep and drink whiskey. (Engine 6′s headquarters was the saloon of its captain, Pat Casey, who never took the company to a fire without a case of “Casey’s No. 6,” a brand of whiskey that was said to make a man more daring.) Owing to the needless loss of goods to both flames and looters, when business leaders lobbied for a full-time, professionally-trained fire department, it spelled the beginning of the end for Chicago’s volunteers.”

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On 10/19/1971 an intentionally set fire by one of the residents at bedtime in the Geiger nursing home killed fifteen (ten females and five male patients) in Honesdale (Wayne County) Pennsylvania. The fire started in a laundry room. The fire resulted in revised fire code standards in the nursing home industry. “All of the 15 elderly residents of a nursing home perished in a flash fire that the police attributed to a gas explosion. A Honesdale fire official said he believed most of the victims died in their beds “or on the floor of smoke inhalation.” Neither police nor fire department officials could account for the nursing personnel at the Geiger Nursing Home, which is about two miles south of this dairy community and about 24 miles northeast of Scranton. The fire started shortly after 8:00 p.m. in the one‐story wood and cinder block building, which is on State Route 191 in a rural area. Only a few farmhouses are within sight of the home. The Honesdale Fire Department, a volunteer organization, called on several nearby communities to help fight the blaze. The fire was brought under control at about 9:30 p.m. The nursing home had been in operation for about 11 years. Damage to the nursing home was extensive, although the roof and walls remained intact. Several firefighters, commenting on what they called “the worst fire we ever had up in this area,” said that a lack of water was a crucial factor in not getting the fire under control earlier.”

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On 10/19/1883 a Chicago, Illinois firefighter died from injuries he received on October 11, 1883, when he was fatally injured while fighting an industrial fire. He was injured when he fell three stories at the Weber Wagon Company factory, located at 154 W. Lake Street, the intersection of Union and Lake Streets. The fire started around 7:00 p.m. The flames were fed by the dry lumber used for manufacturing wagons. While the brick construction of the building created a furnace-like atmosphere inside the building during the fire, interior brick walls that compartmentalized the building also helped to contain the fire within portions of the second and third floors.”

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On 10/19/1927 an Indianapolis, Indiana firefighter “died when he was overcome by smoke while fighting a residential fire at 2422 Brookside Parkway.”

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On 10/19/1940 a Dedham, Massachusetts firefighter “died while operating at a fire on Bridge Street.”

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On 10/19/1964 two Groesbeck, Ohio firefighters died at the Western Home Cabinet facility fire on Colerain Avenue, just south of Galbraith Road. “The fire, which began as a small fire in a sawdust collector quickly spread to the building and required the help of several mutual aid departments. The two firefighters lost their lives after being caught in a catastrophic building collapse.”

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On 10/19/1971 a Houston, Texas firefighter died when an 82-car Missouri Pacific Railroad train had been making its way into Houston when it passed over a track that was being repaired. The track did not hold up under the weight of the loaded rail cars and caused the derailment and a major explosion. The first explosion was from a tank car containing vinyl chloride, while the second tank car explosion contained butadiene. The main reason so many firefighters were hurt was that fire officials did not have information on the chemicals in the rail cars, making it hard for them the handle the situation properly. When the explosion occurred, a firefighter arrived on the scene and began recording the incident when the second tank car exploded, sending a wall of fire over the firefighter killing him instantly. The Mykawa Road train derailment and ensuing explosions injured more than thirty-five people. This disaster, like another well-known Texas disaster, the Texas City explosion of 1947, involved two explosions only a short interval apart. In the Mykawa Road disaster, the violent blasts came forty minutes apart with the second one doing the most damage.”

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On 10/19/1972 a New Bedford, Massachusetts firefighter “while operating a hoseline on the second floor at a fire. He suffered an acute heart attack. The firefighter was rushed to the hospital, where he later died as a result of its effects.”

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On 10/19/2012 Big Tex, the 52-feet tall Texas State Fair icon since 1952 was destroyed by fire.

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On 10/19/1995 near Palo Verde, Arizona an Amtrak train derailment killed one person and injured seventy-eight others (twelve of them seriously) on Southern Pacific Railroad tracks; 4 typewritten notes, attacking the FBI and ATF for the '93 Waco Siege signed "Sons of the Gestapo" were found; the saboteurs were never identified and maybe a fictitious group to conceal a plan to rob a freight train.

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On 10/19/1781 British General Charles Lord Cornwallis surrendered to U.S. General George Washington at Yorktown, Virginia after the last major battle of the American Revolutionary War.

On 10/19/1765 the Stamp Act Congress met and drew up a declaration of rights and liberties. “The Stamp Act Congress or First Congress of the American Colonies was a meeting held between October 7 and 25, 1765 in New York City, consisting of representatives from some of the British colonies in North America; it was the first gathering of elected representatives from several of the American colonies to devise a unified protest against new British taxation.”

On 10/19/1812 Napoleon retreated from Moscow.