Today in Fire History 12/18

On 12/18/1964 a nursing home fire killed twenty in Fountaintown, Indiana in the Maples Convalescent Home around 3:00 a.m. after a nurse reportedly saw the fire in the kitchen and hallway. The fire moved very fast throughout the first floor. “Fourteen patients and three nurses survived, but a physician expressed fears that pneumonia could add to the toll, officially fixed at 20 by the state police. The survivors, some of them barefoot, stood dazed in flimsy nightclothes in the near‐zero cold as the fire engulfed the 60‐year‐old former country mansion. The 34 patients at the nursing home were housed in a 15‐room mansion built at the turn of the century and converted into a private convalescent center in 1946. The patients ranged in age from 65 to 86. The blaze erupted in four above‐zero weather shortly after 2:30 a.m. The fire leaped to the top of the two‐story wooden structure in minutes. A state fire official said a basement furnace apparently overheated and ignited a wall. Many of the dead were invalids trapped in their beds or patients upstairs who were overcome by the suffocating smoke. Rescuers had to struggle to keep some bewildered patients from re‐entering the flaming building. One nurse carried five women downstairs and three men to safety from the first floor. Though groggy from the smoke, she refused hospitalization until she had helped doctors identify the diabetics and others needing special attention. The convalescent home had been pronounced safe by state inspectors six months ago. The fire chief at the time stated that the facility had been carefully inspected, but it is uncertain from the media exactly what codes were established for the inspections. “The whole upstairs was on fire by the time our first truck arrived,” said the volunteer fire chief. “The smoke was so thick in there you couldn't see.” The front wall of an enclosed porch was left standing, a plastic Christmas wreath hanging on the door. Behind it was twisted, blackened ruins with gray plumes of smoke towering into the sky eight hours after the blaze broke out. Fountaintown, 25 miles southeast of Indianapolis, has no hydrant system and firefighters, using tanker trucks, were handicapped by a lack of water. The firefighters broke the ice on nearby Brandywine Creek to get water.”

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On 12/18/1906 a Marysville, California firefighter “died of the injuries he sustained at a fire and explosion that occurred at the White, Cooley & Cutt Tin Shop, on High and E Streets. Members of the fire department were unaware that a shipment of dynamite had temporarily been stored in the tin shop. The firefighters worked on both the High Street and E Street sides of the burning building. While directing the hose team on the E Street side the dynamite exploded, piercing his body with fragments of metal and other foreign substances. He died approximately a week later after the December 18th fire, which was considered to be fatal from the start.”

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On 12/18/1918 a Brooklyn, New York (FDNY) firefighter “was killed when he was knocked off a ladder from the third floor by a falling window while operating at a fire.”

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On 12/18/1926 a Brooklyn, New York (FDNY) firefighter “died of smoke inhalation while operating at a four-alarm fire, Box # 44-417, 257-259 Water Street.”

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12/18/1929 a Buffalo, New York firefighter “was operating a handline during a 2nd-alarm fire at Main and Michigan around 1:00 a.m. in the International Railway Company building. He became trapped by fast-moving flames in the rear of the building. The firefighter died en route to Sisters Hospital from Severe burns. The fire was started when a buildup of ice brought down power lines sparking a blaze that destroyed the building and over 30 cars, buses, and trolley cars.”

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On 12/18/1939 a Piqua, Ohio firefighter “died while commanding suppression efforts at a large industrial fire.”

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On 12/18/1940 a Weymouth, Massachusetts firefighter died at “a house fire, 85 Grant Street, around 3:30 a.m. The building was a two-family wood-frame structure. The fire gained considerable headway in the rear section of the home. While fighting the fire, two firefighters were overcome by smoke. One toppled 25 feet from the 2nd-floor window and crashed through a cellar bulkhead door, causing mortal wounds. He died several days later after breaking a vertebra in his back and sustaining a broken collarbone and internal injuries along with a severe gash on his forehead. The other firefighter was carried from the home and suffered severe smoke inhalation.”

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On 12/18/1940 a Waterbury, Connecticut firefighter “died while operating at a fire.”

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On 12/18/1959 a Toronto, Ontario, Canada firefighter “died from being overcome by heavy smoke on December 13th, as he led a search party into the 3rd-floor of the Café on Bloor Street West, where they had a serious basement fire.”

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On 12/18/1966 a Baltimore, Maryland firefighter died “while working a fire involving the lounge room of a hall at the College of Notre Dame of Maryland. The fire was extending upwards and nearly 200 female students were fleeing the burning building. The fire went to six alarms in five minutes due to the life hazard present and the intensity of the blaze.”

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On 12/18/1969 a Springfield, Illinois firefighter “was fatally injured when the south wall of the warehouse collapsed during firefighting operations around 5:25 a.m. Firefighters received an alarm for a fire at the G&E Furniture Company near the intersection of Ninth and Monroe Streets. More than sixty firefighters and nine apparatus responded to the fire. Shortly after 6:00 a.m., two firefighters were cutting through a steel door on the south side of the warehouse when the wall collapsed, burying one firefighter under bricks and other building materials. Firefighters continued to battle the fire for several more hours, but the entire building was destroyed.”

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On 12/18/1974 a Buckley Air Force Base, Aurora, Colorado, “firefighter was among five people who died in the explosion of a jet fuel storage tank that was being cleaned. The explosion caused a 50-foot crater.”

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On 12/18/1979 a Los Angeles County, California firefighter “died from the injuries he sustained while operating at a fire.”

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On 12/18/1998 three Brooklyn, New York (FDNY) firefighters were killed while trying to locate a fire in a 10-story, Class 1, masonry high-rise building for the elderly that had been burning for 20 to 30 minutes. The fire on the 10th floor auto-vented through the window, allowing wind of 15 mph, gusting to 25 mph to escalate the fire, the door partially opened, allowing smoke and hot gases to enter the hallway. “On arrival, firefighters were notified of an apartment fire, with people trapped on the tenth floor of an occupied ten-story brick senior citizens building. The members of Ladder 170 raced to the top floor via the stairs. Where they proceeded to enter along a narrow hallway leading to the apartment. Suddenly, the fire blew out the windows of the apartment and a 25 mph gust of wind fanned the intense flames. This caused a massive fireball to roll out of the open apartment door and engulf the men in the hallway as they searched for trapped occupants. The members of the company were burned, and three who bore the brunt of the fireball went into full arrest almost immediately. Other firefighters, hearing their "Mayday" over the department radio, were able to knock down the fire and rescue their trapped brothers. There were rushed to various area hospitals, where they all died shortly thereafter. Five other firefighters and four civilians were also injured in the three-alarm fire. The next day a controversy arose over why the sprinklers system had been turned off in the building.”

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On 12/18/1999 a Kansas City, Missouri firefighter died while working inside an approximately 300,000-square-foot warehouse that was involved in a fire. “The fire was located in the paper-bale section and was causing the structure to fill with a haze of white smoke. Visibility in the warehouse was good and firefighters were putting water on the fire. Firefighters in the interior reported varying smoke conditions, ranging from heavy, white smoke banking down from the ceiling to the mid-part of the structure on the south side, to light haze at other locations inside the structure. Other firefighters in the interior reported that approximately 20-foot flames were extending from the paper bales to the ceiling on the opposite side of the initial fire attack. About 45 minutes into the incident, interior conditions changed rapidly as thick black smoke enveloped the building. Firefighters battled the fire for approximately 52 minutes before the Command decided conditions were deteriorating and they should go to a defensive attack, ordering the building to be evacuated. The emergency evacuation signal was given over radios and by fire apparatus air horns at the scene.” During the evacuation, the firefighter became disoriented and lost; however, he was in radio communication with Command. Command ordered the two initial Rapid Intervention Teams (RITs) (RIT #1 and #2) to enter and search for the missing officer. Both teams entered but eventually ran low on air and were forced to exit. Six search teams swept the building but were not able to locate the missing firefighter. One last additional RIT was formed and found him approximately 1? hours after the initial dispatch. He was transported to a nearby hospital where he was pronounced dead… The structure involved in this incident was a one-story Type II Non-Combustible metal-pole building constructed on a concrete slab foundation. The interior roof system contained metal roof trusses, and the exterior was constructed of metal, rubber, and stone particulate. The structure was originally used as a grocery warehouse; currently, the structure housed a paper products manufacturer. It measured approximately 25 feet in height, 500 feet in width, and 600 feet in length with a floor space of about 300,000 square feet. The origin of the fire was determined to be in the paper bale section of the building. This section of the building had no windows. There were six exterior vents in this section, all located at the ceiling level. There were 13 overhead doors on a loading dock located in this section, and one standard door was located on the south side. The ventilation system was not in operation when the fire occurred. The structure was equipped with a sprinkler system. Pumper 39’s crew stated that water was flowing into the system, but crews in the interior could not recall if the sprinklers were activated.… Interior operations advised Command that they might have radio problems, due to past experiences with their radios in this type of structure. The fire department was equipped with an 800 MHz trunked radio system. Recognizing that communication problems might occur, operations were assigned to the talk-around channel.”

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On 12/18/2017 a Nyack, New York firefighter “became ill and suffered a heart attack at the scene of an odor investigation and was transported to Nyack Hospital where he later died. Firefighters had responded to a report of a chemical spill at the Chase Bank on North Broadway, that turned out to be a battery in the bank’s alarm system that was overheating and was creating an odor.”

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On 12/18/2021 a firefighter of the Boischatel / L’Ange-Gardien Fire Department, near Quebec City, Canada, died while operating at a dwelling fire in Boischatel around 11:00 p.m. when the structure collapsed trapping him under the rubble. The fire began in the garage and quickly spread to the rest of the house.

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On 12/18/2021 a “fire broke out at a distribution center for QVC, the home shopping network, in Rocky Mount, Edgecombe County, North Carolina. The fire, which was reported around 2:00 a.m., killed one employee and damaged 75 percent of the 1.5 million-square-foot building. There were 300 employees in the building when the fire started in a facility that employed about 2,000, QVC is one of the largest employers in Rocky Mount, a city of about 54,000 people, 60 miles east of Raleigh. The distribution center opened in Rocky Mount in 1999 and expanded in February 2011. The facility is the company’s second-largest fulfillment center processing around "25% to 30% of volume,"

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On 12/18/2017 an 11-year-old boy, a 7-year-old boy, a 3-year-old girl, and their 40-year-old mother died in a house fire that broke out inside a two-and-a-half-story home just before 2:30 a.m. on East 14th Street in?Sheepshead?Bay, Brooklyn, New York. Ten other people were hurt in the fire. The 45-year-old father, his teenage son, and 16-year-old cousin were critically injured; seven others, including five firefighters and two boys, had minor injuries.?The fire was caused by an unattended lit menorah.

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On 12/18/2014 a tree fell onto Red Wind Casino’s propane tank near Olympia, Washington cracking the tank and starting a two-alarm fire around 9:30 p.m. during a serious storm. No injuries were reported.

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On 12/18/2014 a warehouse at the Conakry, Guinea airport containing crucial medicines and lab materials used to fight Ebola by the United Nations Mission for Emergency Ebola Response (UNMEER) was destroyed by fire. “Conakry, Ebola’s ground zero in the country where more than 1,500 people died from the disease.”

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On 12/18/1982 a power plant burned in Venezuela that killed 128 and injured hundreds more. Half the capital city of Caracas lost electrical power when a fire broke out in a tank filled with No.6 fuel oil at the Tacoma power plant on the outskirts of the city. The water supply did not work, and the fire continued to burn to cause a “huge explosion” that killed “spectators from the village below the plant that had gathered to watch the fire. To make matters worse, the superheated flaming oil poured down the hillside toward a village;” requiring 40,000 area residents had to be evacuated from their homes.

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On 12/18/1918 the Boston (Massachusetts) Arena, 238 Saint Botolph Street, was destroyed by a raging fire, Box 2326, around 5:41 a.m. The 4-alarm fire damage was estimated at $233,100. Companies were pulled from the roof just before it collapsed.

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On 12/18/1899 at 1:00 a.m. a fire was discovered in the storehouse of Simpson Brothers, a dry goods store, in Hallettsville, Texas on the northeast side of the courthouse square in a two-story brick building.

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On 12/18/1941 Japan invaded Hong Kong.

On 12/18/1916 during World War I Battle of Verdun ends.

On 12/18/1878 John Kehoe, the last of the Molly Maguire’s, an Irish secret society that had allegedly been responsible for some incidences of vigilante justice in the coalfields of eastern Pennsylvania, was executed.

On 12/18/1865 the House passed the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery in America.

On 12/18/1862 the Civil War battle of Lexington, Tennessee began.

On 12/18/1620 Mayflower passengers came ashore at Plymouth Harbor.