Today in Fire History 3/28

On 3/28/1960 the Cheapside Street whisky bond fire in Glasgow, Scotland killed nineteen firefighters. “The fire broke out in a bonded warehouse owned by Arbuckle, Smith, and Company on Cheapside Street, Anderston, Glasgow around 7:15 p.m. Fire was reported as smoke coming from a second-floor window of the warehouse. At 7:49 p.m. a major explosion blew out the walls of the premises virtually destroying it.” “The warehouse contained over a million gallons of whisky and 30,000 gallons rum in 21,000 wooden casks under one roof. As the temperature of the fire increased, some of these casks ruptured, causing a massive BLEVE that burst the front and rear walls of the building outwards causing large quantities of masonry to collapse into the street. This collapse instantly killed three firefighters on Cheapside Street as well as eleven firefighters and five salvagemen (firefighters) who were battling the blaze from the rear of the building on Warrach Street. In total, thirty pumping appliances, five turntable ladders, and four support vehicles were sent to the scene from around the area. At the height of the blaze, 450 firefighters from the Greater Clyde valley were involved in fighting the fire, which took a week to extinguish. Witnesses reported seeing bright blue flames leaping forty feet into the sky, with the glow visible across the entire city. Neighboring buildings, including a tobacco warehouse, an ice cream factory, and the Harland and Wolff engine works, were damaged by the fire and explosion.” Note: “whisky is from Scotland and whiskey is from Ireland.”

On 3/28/1944 a pyromaniac set several fires in the New Amsterdam Hotel at 273 Fourth Street San Francisco, California that killed at least twenty-two and injured twenty-seven; trapped by flames in the bedrooms and hallways. “The New Amsterdam, located in the skidrow district south of Market Street, burst into flames shortly after five other hotel fires had been reported in the same area within four hours. Police began a hunt for an arsonist believed responsible for not only the San Francisco fires last night but also for a series of 11 blazes that broke out in Oakland hotels last weekend. Authorities noted an odor of kerosene or gasoline about last night's fires. Veteran firefighters said they had never seen a crowd gather so quickly as it did at the New Amsterdam holocaust. “They seemed to sense instantly that there was death throughout the building,” one firefighter said. “A lot of them had just come from dwellings where death might have struck just as suddenly.” “On August 3, 1944, George Holman, a 47-year old cafe proprietor, was found guilty in San Francisco of 22 counts of murder in the first degree for setting the fire. On August 15, he was sentenced to 22 concurrent life terms in prison.”

On 3/28/1865 the first ambulance service was established, based out of Commercial Hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio (now the Cincinnati General).

On 3/28/1899 a Harrisburg, Pennsylvania firefighter died “while investigating a fire involving a pole and an electrical box, he was electrocuted when he somehow came in contact with the charged box and was hit with 2,000 volts.”

On 3/28/1962 a Worcester, Massachusetts firefighter “died from smoke inhalation.”

On 3/28/1968 a Baltimore, Maryland firefighter died while operating at a two-story brick, L-shaped welding plant heavily involved in fire. “At the height of the three-alarm blaze, three firefighters were trapped when the roof collapsed, but they were successfully rescued by other firefighters. He was carrying a ladder when he tripped and fell to the street.”

On 3/28/1971 a Brooklyn, New York (FDNY) firefighter “was burned to death when he was caught in a flashover as he attempted to rescue trapped occupants in a three-alarm tenement fire. Tenants saved four children when they threw a mattress out of a window and dropped the children on top of it.”

On 3/28/1994 “three Brooklyn, New York (FDNY) firefighters trapped in the stairwell of a brownstone were burned when they were enveloped in a fire while attempting to force their way through a heavy steel door to a second-floor apartment. The three were conducting a search when the hot air and toxic gases that collected in the stairwell erupted into flames as other fire crews forced entry into the first-floor apartment where the fire had originated. The fire exhibited characteristics of both a backdraft and a flashover. One firefighter, in the bottom position on the stairs, was burned and died at the scene. The other two firefighters were rescued by other firefighters. They were transported to a burn unit with third and fourth-degree burns over 50 percent of their bodies. One died the next day. The third passed away several weeks later. The fire cause was determined to be a plastic bag left by the residents on top of the stove of the floor apartment.”

On 3/28/1920 a fire destroyed two city blocks and damaged parts of three others in Lakeland, Florida; “among the concerns wiped out were the Lakeland Manufacturing company, in whose lumber yard the fire originated: the Shaw hotel, Main Street garage.”

On 3/28/1918 in Detroit, Michigan the Armstrong and Graham Saddlery Company was destroyed by fire.

On 3/28/1917 in Creston, West Virginia a gas leak caused an explosion and fire in Stephen Hotel that killed five and extended to ten other buildings.

On 3/28/1911 the Linn Grove, Iowa conflagration started

On 3/28/1908 two explosions at the Union Pacific Coal Company's Mine #1, killed fifty-eight miners in Hanna, Wyoming.

On 3/28/1901 the Comanche, Texas railroad freight depot was damaged by fire.

On 3/28/1897 fifty families were homeless after a fire destroys their residences in Portsmouth, Virginia. “A high north wind swept the flames through half a dozen small residences, and then huge brands were blown across the city to the southward, and at 2:00 a.m. the steeple of the Catholic Church three blocks away caught fire. In less than half an hour the edifice was in ruins.”

On 3/28/1895 the entire business portion and thirty dwellings were burned in a fire started at 12:40 a.m. and spread rapidly driven by strong winds in ?Canaseraga, New York

On 3/28/1888 a train engine boiler explosion killed two near Manchester, Connecticut.

On 3/28/1969 President Dwight David Eisenhower died.

On 3/28/1970 a 7.4 magnitude earthquake killed 1,086 and destroyed 254 villages in Gediz, Turkey.

On 3/28/1979 a nuclear accident at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania began when a pressure valve in the unit-2 reactor failed to close, the power plant was built on a sandbar on the Susquehanna River in 1974 ten miles downstream from the state capitol (Harrisburg), some workers were exposed to unhealthy levels of radiation, no one outside the plant had had any adverse health effects.