Today in Fire History 12/24

12/24/1924 a school fire in Babbs Switch, Kiowa County, Oklahoma killed thirty-five when the cotton-trimmed Santa Claus' coat caught fire from a candle and quickly spread. The door opened inward trapping the panic-stricken crowd. “The windows were nailed down and there was no escape for twenty-five of the people who were virtually cremated.” “In the wake of the fire, Oklahoma’s legislature passed laws and pushed safety campaigns to prevent a similar tragedy, according to The Oklahoman archives. Officials evaluated schools throughout the state for fire hazards. Oklahoma schools replaced inward-opening doors with doors that opened outward. Schools added exits and screens that could be opened from the outside, purchased fire extinguishers for every room, and banned open flames. Fire escapes were added to multilevel school buildings. Between 1908 and 1958, school fires in just eight states, including Oklahoma’s Babbs Switch fire, would kill at least 755 people, according to the National Fire Protection Association. Among the tragedies: A March 4, 1908, fire at the Lakeview School in Collingwood, Ohio, that killed 173 students and two teachers; 294 children and teachers perished at a school in the aftermath of a gas explosion on March 18, 1937, in New London, Texas; and a December 1, 1958, fire at Our Lady of the Angel, a Chicago elementary school, killed 90 students and three nuns.”

12/24/1913 in Calumet Township, Houghton County, in the Michigan Upper Peninsula, panic killed eighty persons, mostly children, during a Christmas celebration held by striking copper miners in the Italian Hall because of a false alarm of fire. Stairway and other avenues of egress were blocked, and the principal exit was a narrow stairway at the back of the hall. The women's auxiliary of the Western Federation of Miners arranged a Christmas event on the 2nd-floor that was filled. While Santa Claus distributed the presents, a large bearded man thrust his head in at the rear of the main hallway and shouted "fire!" There was no fire. “The cry was taken up at once by those in the hall. Everyone sprang up and started for the doors. The weaker persons were thrown to the floor and those behind tried to climb the human barrier. In a few minutes, the panic was stopped by the fact that the stairway and the other avenues of egress were blocked so effectually that those inside the hall could not get out, and those out could not get in to aid the maimed and remove the dead. The alarm was spread outside the hall by a few persons who had been near the door and escaped unhurt. A crowd soon assembled and the work of clearing the hall was begun.” “The only regular exit was a narrow stairway at the back of the hall. When this had been cleaned of the bodies that filled it to the top a quick accounting had been made, it was found that 74 corpses had been piled up behind the hall building. It was thought that probably a dozen more had been carried away by family and friends. The dead included 37 girls, 19 boys, 13 women, and 5 men.”

12/24/1894 in Silver Lake, Oregon forty people died and sixteen were injured in a 2nd-floor assembly hall fire that started from an oil lamp during a Christmas Eve gathering in the hall above Christman Brothers’ Store. Someone who attempted to get a better view jumped on a bench that struck a lamp hanging from the ceiling causing the oil to run out, which immediately caught fire.

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12/24/2012 two Webster, New York firefighters were killed, and two firefighters and a police officer were injured, after a convicted felon ambushed them at a fire he started that destroyed a vehicle and his home before killing himself in the Rochester suburb, in a Lake Ontario beach community. Firefighters responded to “the report of a fire at 191 Lake Road, Webster, NY. An individual had intentionally set a vehicle on fire and the fire had spread to a house. As firefighters arrived on the scene, they were fired upon by the occupant of the home.”

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12/24/1994 a Milwaukee, Wisconsin firefighter died at a fire in a church when he fell through a hole in the second floor. “He had been operating an attack line in the church with an engine company when he went to check a room for fire extension. His crew heard him call for help and found him hanging from a hole in the floor, but they were unable to keep him from falling. He fell approximately 12 feet into the first floor. Rescue crews tried to reach him, alerted by his PASS device which had been activated, but were hampered by the collapsed floor in the front of the building and barred security doors at the rear of the building. Rescue crews eventually fought their way through heavy heat and smoke conditions to his location, removed him from the building, and administered emergency care. His air supply had been exhausted, and his death has been attributed to smoke inhalation.”

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12/24/1968 a Brooklyn, New York (FDNY) firefighter “died as a result of critical burns sustained while operating at a single alarm fire on November 30th.”

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12/24/1966 a Danbury, Connecticut firefighter “died while trying to save his mother from at his Backus Avenue home. The fire was ignited by a space heart. He attempted to lift his mother through a bathroom window to safety, but when that proved unsuccessful, he tried to shelter her from the flames with his own body. The fire would also claim his mother’s life.”

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12/24/1949 a Brooklyn, New York (FDNY) firefighter “died as a result of the severe smoke inhalation sustained the previous day while operating at a single alarm fire.”

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12/24/1943 a Chicago, Illinois firefighter suffered fatal injuries “while fighting a fire at a Bellevue Place rooming house. He sustained head injuries when he fell to the ground after the ladder he was standing on broke.”

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12/24/1943 a Scranton, Pennsylvania firefighter died after responding to a University of Scranton building on the corner of Mulberry Street and Wyoming Avenue. While fighting a multiple alarm fire, He was overcome and taken to the hospital for exhaustion and smoke inhalation.

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12/24/1938 a Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, New York (FDNY) firefighter “died while fighting a fire in a freight car of the Long Island Railroad at 2nd Avenue and 65th Street that started around 9:51 p.m. He collapsed and died at 10:05 p.m. from overexertion.”

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12/24/1937 a New Britain, Connecticut firefighter “died after suffering a heart attack, from the effects of smoke inhalation.”

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12/24/1926 a Los Angeles, California firefighter “died after being electrocuted when his helmet eagle touched an energized wire roof of a chicken coop. The power line had dropped on the coop and started a small fire at 1337 West Fifty-Eight Place, on that stormy afternoon.”

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12/24/1912 a Houston, Texas firefighter “died as a result of injuries sustained November 22nd, when he was caught in the explosion of a burning railroad boxcar filled with fireworks.”

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12/24/1909 two Lewiston, Maine firefighters “died when a wall collapsed at the Callahan Block fire at 274 Lisbon Street.”

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12/24/1908 a Houston, Texas firefighter “lost his life while he and his men were trying to extinguish a blaze in a railroad boxcar loaded with fireworks. The fire took place on the afternoon of November 22, 1908, in the Houston Belt Terminal Railroad switching yard located east of downtown. The fire started when a switch engine kicked another boxcar into a boxcar loaded with fireworks. The collision of the two boxcars caused an explosion and the ensuing fire. The firefighter was directing his men with little or no concern about the exploded boxcar because the explosion blew the roof of the car, thus minimizing its danger. The main concern was the possibility of the fire reaching the other railcars, however, unknown to the firefighters, large shells for aerial fireworks were on board the boxcar. Those who investigated the accident believed that one or more of the shells exploded at the end of the car where the firefighter stood. He took the full brunt of the blast. Five other firefighters were injured and taken to Saint Joseph Hospital. The firefighter fought courageously for his life until December 24, 1908, when he lost his final battle.

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12/24/1989 around 5:10 p.m. an accidental Christmas Eve fire in the 11-story John Sevier Center in Johnson City, Tennessee killed sixteen and injured forty.?The fire started in a first-floor apartment from smoking materials that spread into a combustible concealed space above the apartment’s suspended ceiling horizontally over most of the first floor and vertically into two areas of the second floor through unprotected utility penetrations made during a renovation. However, smoke traveled throughout the entire building. The center, a mixed occupancy with residential apartments on all eleven floors and business facilities on the first floor, was constructed in 1924 as a fire-resistive hotel but was converted to its current use with light-weight noncombustible, and combustible construction in areas on the lower floors. There were many unprotected penetrations for pipes and other utilities.

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12/24/1965 four died in a fire that started from a dry, “flame-proofed” Christmas tree in the library of the Military Park Hotel in Newark, New Jersey. The intense, short-duration fire spread to the story above by combustible decorations and interior finish; smoke spread throughout the building by the substandard stair towers and air conditioning (HVAC) ducts without dampers.

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12/24/1935 in Paulsboro, New Jersey an explosion on a 25,000 gallons gasoline barge owned by the International Oil Transportation Company of Philadelphia killed two while the was being moored to a wharf after arriving from Bayonne.

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12/24/1851 a fire ravaged the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. destroying two-thirds of its 55,000 volumes; most of Thomas Jefferson's personal library was damaged.

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12/24/1740 George Washington's boyhood home in Fredericksburg, Virginia was destroyed by fire.

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12/24/1895 fifteen members of the Dublin, Ireland Dun Laoghaire Lifeboat Station “died when their lifeboat capsized in gale-force winds during the attempted rescue of twenty people on a ship, the SS Palme of Finland, which ran aground off Blackrock. None of the lifeboat crew survived. The accident was due to the lifeboat capsizing when about 600 yards from the distressed vessel and, although every effort was made to render help to the lifeboat and the Palme, nothing could be done. The number one lifeboat was also put out with only a crew of nine and obtained six further volunteers from HMS Melampus. She also capsized under sail but fortunately, all regained the lifeboat.”

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12/24/1979 Soviet tanks invaded Afghanistan.

12/24/1964 the Viet Cong bomb the Brinks Hotel with a car filled with explosives parked in front of the Saigon hotel, housing U.S. officers that killed two Americans and injured sixty-five Americans and Vietnamese.

12/24/1814 the War of 1812 ended.