Today in Fire History 12/31

On 12/31/1986 the DuPont Plaza Hotel fire killed ninety-seven and injured 140 in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The arson fire was started around 3:30 p.m. by three disgruntled employees, with cans of a flammable liquid used in chafing dishes in a storage room filled with furniture. The fire flashed over and extended up the grand staircase to the lobby and into the casino. Egress from the casino was through a pair of inward-opening doors. “In June 1985, the Dupont Plaza was inspected by the local fire department and was found to have deficiencies in safety systems, including malfunctioning equipment and lack of evacuation and emergency plans. The fire sprinkler system was not automated. At the time of the fire, the hotel was estimated to be at near-peak occupancy, with 900 to 1,000 guests. The fire ignited the furniture and quickly burned out of control, growing to massive proportions and flashing over. After flashing over in the ballroom (confused with an explosion), the hot gases swept up the grand staircase into the lobby of the hotel. The fire was drawn through the open doors of the casino by the smoke-eaters (devices in the ceiling that sucked the smoke from cigarettes out of the room) present throughout the casino. More than 150 guests were estimated to be in the casino when the fire broke out, and most of the deaths occurred in that area. Several months before the fire, hotel management had had the emergency exit doors locked to prevent theft, and the only other way out was through a pair of inward-opening doors. People pressed against the doors to no avail. Others leaped from the second-story casino through plate-glass windows to the pool deck below; many were injured. Others died of smoke inhalation on the upper floors of the casino. Still, others were killed as they rode the elevators to the lobby, only to discover their path blocked by the fire when the doors opened. Those who were able to do so climbed to the hotel's roof, where an improvised helicopter rescue, from the Roosevelt Roads Naval Air Station, transported people to safety. The Puerto Rico Fire Department was dispatched at around 3:40 p.m. and 13 fire units, 100 firefighters, and 35 ambulances responded. Firefighters extinguished the flames three hours later, although black smoke continued through the night. Eighty-four bodies were found in the casino, five in the lobby, three in an elevator, and two at a poolside bar outside the hotel. An investigation by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration revealed 25 safety violations, including a lack of emergency exit doors in the casino area leading to the deaths of 84 trapped guests…In 1985, there were 7,500 reported fires in hotels and motels across the U.S., with 85 deaths and $56 million in damages (equivalent to $111 million in 2018). On September 25, 1990, three years after the disaster, the United States enacted the Hotel and Motel Fire Safety Act of 1990, requiring all hotels and other public accommodations wanting to accommodate federal workers or hold federally funded activities to have smoke detectors in all guest rooms and to have working sprinkler systems if the building had more than three stories. The United States Fire Administration has credited the Dupont Plaza fire along with the MGM Grand fire in 1980 as the catalysts for the safety requirements being signed into law.”

?

On 12/31/1994 around 9:00 p.m., a fire killed five patients in a seven-story 468-bed hospital, a full-care facility, in Petersburg, Virginia, caused by smoking materials. The original hospital was constructed in the early 1950s. Several additions and renovations, adding a variety of construction types and fire control systems, modified the facility. The seven-story south wing of the hospital was renovated in 1974. The main hospital building had three wings in a T-shape with three corridors extending out from a nurses’ station and elevator lobby. The entire hospital was equipped with a combination of smoke detection and manual pull stations fire alarm system. A Class 3 standpipe system serves all floors; outlets for fire department hoselines are located in hose cabinets in the corridors. Smoke control doors were installed at the opening of each corridor to provide a separation from the lobby. The doors, which are normally open, were automatically released to close upon activation of the building fire alarm system. An enclosed exit stairway was located at the end of each corridor. On the fourth floor, the T-shaped corridor referred to as 4- South included 27 patient rooms including the room of origin. The fire began in a patient’s room after smoking materials ignited bedding, including an “air floatation” mattress with foam plastic padding intensified when oxygen was released from the hospital’s piped oxygen distribution system in the high-rise building of fire-resistive construction. Smoke spread into the corridor and other patient rooms through open doors extended into a noncombustible concealed space above the ceilings on the same side of the corridor as the fire room.? The smoke was able to enter these concealed spaces because the walls were not continuous from the floor to the underside of the floor above. The building had been equipped with fire protection features currently required by fire safety codes but lacked a fire sprinkler system in the room of origin or the corridor. The hospital staff had been trained to respond to fire emergencies.

?

On 12/31/2008 a Pisgah, Mississippi firefighter “lost his life at a structural fire just north of Marietta in southwest Prentiss County. After exiting the burning home, he collapsed and died.”

?

On 12/31/1998 a Banks County, Homer, Georgia firefighter died while rescuing other firefighters when a roof collapsed during a structure fire at a church that was built around 1850. He was caught under heavy timbers in a roof collapse. Officials later confirmed that the fire was the work of a nationwide serial arsonist. “The structure involved in this incident was a Type V wood frame church. The construction consisted of wood balloon-frame walls and a heavy, wood, gabled roof. The building was wrapped in wood clapboard siding and had an asphalt-shingled roof. The church had a covered entryway with double entry doors on the Alpha side and double entry doors located about midway on the Bravo and Delta sides. There were no exposed buildings. The structure had a large enclosed attic area above the sanctuary with an access hatchway located near the Alpha side front entry doors. The church had a drop style ceiling two feet below a wood tongue-and-groove ceiling over the sanctuary area.”

?

On 12/31/1995 a Queens, New York (FDNY) firefighter “died in a “crack-house” fire after falling into the basement. “On arrival, firefighters found heavy fire and smoke showing from the basement of a vacant and condemned two-story brick dwelling. He entered the building, which was a "crack-house," through a side door to search for reported squatters possibly trapped in the burning building. After proceeding about ten feet, he fell through a hole in the first floor, into the burning basement. Other firefighters couldn't make any contact with him and they couldn't enter the hole due to the tremendous quantity of heat pushing through it. The building rapidly became fully involved from the basement through the roof and a second alarm was struck.”

?

On 12/31/1988 a Wichita, Kansas Firefighter lost his life when he was trapped inside a house at 3749 N. Meridian.

?

On 12/31/1985 a Cleveland, Ohio firefighter died during a warehouse fire. “Engine Company 22 responded to a Box Alarm at Milner Electric Company at 3804 Saint Clair Avenue. Milner Electric warehoused electric supplies on “floor-to-ceiling” storage racks, which were arranged in very tight rows.” The crew from Engine 22 advanced a hand line into the warehouse, burning and heavily charged with smoke. At some point, one firefighter became separated from the hose line and lost in the maze of storage racks. He ran out of air before his fellow firefighters could find and rescue him.

?

On 12/31/1977 a “three-alarm blaze at 172 - 174 Pearl Street Chelsea, Massachusetts claimed the lives of a veteran Chelsea firefighter, two young brothers, and their babysitter. The fire, which also saw 13 local firefighters overcome or injured during its fury, started shortly after 11:00 p.m. Fire investigators immediately determined that the fire was the work of an arsonist. The blaze was reported set in a first-floor bathroom.”

?

On 12/31/1977 a Binghamton, New York firefighter “died as a result of inhaling deadly fumes from a copier fire at the office of vital statistics in City Hall. He became ill at the station after the fire call and passed away at home the next day.”

?

On 12/31/1971 a Crawfordsville, Indiana firefighter “died while operating at a fire and defending the historic Crawford Hotel.”

?

On 12/31/1957 an Oakland, California firefighter was electrocuted as he fought a fire at 589 Sycamore Street. He reportedly slipped and grabbed a live wire as he ran across the backyard.

?

On 12/31/1937 a Kenora, Ontario, Canada firefighter died from injuries received in an attic fire in a Garage in the northern part of town, while searching for the seat of the fire, during an explosion.

?

On 12/31/1904 two Chicago, Illinois firefighters “died while fighting a commercial fire at the intersection of Washington Boulevard and 40th Avenue, 3859 West End Avenue when the building’s south wall collapsed. Both firefighters died within minutes of being pulled from the wreckage. Both firefighters had suffered minor injuries when the two-story building’s north wall collapsed on them earlier during the fire attack, but they kept working.”

?

On 12/31/1896 a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania firefighter “died while operating at a fire at 9 Strawberry Street, he was killed when the 35' ladder he was working from broke, pitching him to the pavement.”

?

On 12/31/2021 a fire broke out in “an underground area below a market in northeast China’s Dalian City that has left nine people and a firefighter dead. Five people were slightly injured and sent to treatment. The accident happened at 11:11 a.m., and the open fire was extinguished around 1:00 p.m.”

?

On 12/31/2017 a fourteen-year-old Fort Pierce, St. Lucie County, Florida girl suffered third-degree burns to?95 percent of her body after trying to relight a dwindling bonfire outside her friend's home. She attempted to pour gasoline on the fire when the gas can exploded. Her 18-year-old friend and her parents, suffered burns on his hands while trying to extinguish the flames on Layne, according to reports.

?

On 12/31/2015 a downtown Dubai, UAE hotel fire began outside the building, on the 20th-floor terrace, and affected at least 20 stories of the building 63-story luxury hotel building before 10:00 p.m. “The 63-story Address Downtown Dubai building was completed in 2008 and contains 196 luxury hotel rooms and more than 600 apartments.” “The exterior fire was to the non-fire-rated (ACP) aluminum composite panels.”? “The buildings’ cladding panels contain a dangerous mix of aluminum and polyurethane and are likely the cause of the rapid rates at which the fires spread. The hotel has interior fire sprinklers that prevent any flames from going into the building. “A similar situation occurred in 2008 at the Monte Carlo Hotel in Las Vegas. Exterior combustible foam-based signs ignited the front of the building. Again, fire sprinklers prevented the fire from entering the hotel.”

?

On 12/31/2014 in Quezon City, (metropolitan Manila) the Philippines outlawed firecrackers started at least 17 fires, one destroyed a thousand houses, mostly shanties, and huts, displacing about 4,000 poor families and killing three with more than 350 injured during the New Year's Eve celebration.

?

On 12/31/2014 a fire started on the ninth floor of the 18-story, 220-apartment building at 11:45 p.m. on the stove from soup left unattended and spread to the living room and back bedrooms that left three dead in Queens New York. A soup called Joumou, a spicy pumpkin soup is made every year and served on January 1, celebrating the anniversary of Haiti's liberation from France.

?

On 12/31/2013 a Bangalore-Nanded express train caught fire in a tunnel that killed twenty-six and injured nine of the 64 passengers after a fire broke out in an air-conditioned bogie of the Nanded Express in Anantapur district in Andhra Pradesh around 3:15 a.m.

?

On 12/31/1929 in Bonham, Texas the Fannin County Courthouse was destroyed by fire and destroyed nearly all county records.

?

On 12/31/1916 in Saint Ferdinand de Halifax, Quebec, Canada an “Insane Asylum” fire killed forty-six (“forty-five insane women patients”). A regular government establishment for the care of the insane was being used for the care of female patients. The facility housed 180 patients near Plessisville, Quebec.

?

On 12/31/1907 a mine explosion of gas and coal dust killed nine around noon in the Bernal mine at Carthage, Socorro County, New Mexico owned by the Carthage Fuel Company.

?

On 12/31/1862 the Civil War Battle of Stone’s River Tennessee began, on the banks of Stone’s River outside Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and was fought in miserable weather that saw bitterly cold rain and sleet. The three-day battle involved more than 80,000 soldiers and inflicted staggering casualties, with over 23,500 men killed, wounded, or missing was some of the most brutal and ferocious fighting of the war under the commands of General William Rosecrans (U.S) and Braxton Bragg (CSA). In western Tennessee, the Battle of Parker's Crossroads occurred when Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest escaped capture during a raid that was instrumental in forcing Union General Ulysses S. Grant to abandon his first attempt to capture Vicksburg, Mississippi.

?

On 12/31/1775 Patriots were defeated by the British at Quebec under General Richard Montgomery and Colonel Benedict Arnold while attempting to capture the city under cover of darkness and snowfall; the effort cost Montgomery his life.