BOMBING, LOS ANGELES

Photo: lafire.com

On Oct. 1, 1910, a bomb leveled The Los Angeles Times building, killing 21 people and injuring 100 others. The device, consisting of 16 sticks of dynamite and an alarm clock, was the work of  J.B. McNamara as part of a radical bombing campaign.

OUR LADY OF ANGELS, CHICAGO

On Dec. 1, 1958, a fire at Our Lady of the Angels school in Chicago killed 92 students and three nuns. The school had just one fire escape, no sprinklers and no fire doors - and yet it was in compliance with fire regulations. The disaster led to sweeping nationwide changes in fire regulations. It was symbolized in a photo on the cover of Life magazine showing firefighter Richard Scheidt carrying the body John Jajkowski, age 10.

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(Editors Note - Tommy Raymond, 12, a seventh grader, was trapped for 20 minutes in his second floor classroom at Our Lady of the Angels School. Here is his story.)

By TOMMY RAYMOND
As Told To UPI

CHICAGO (UPI) - I hesitated on the window sill thinking about jumping - and how I would look dead - when firemen shouted to me to wait and they'd save me.

Most of my other classmates had got out and I was the last one. But when I walked into the hall the smoke was so thick I ran back into the room. I ran to a window in the room and threw some books out through the glass to break the window. It's funny, but I remember the books - my reader and some text books.

After the window broke I got on the sill and began thinking about jumping. That's when the firemen down below started shouting at me not to jump, but they'd come and get me. So I got back off the sill.

Now that I think back to when it started, I remember we were having a singing lesson. We didn't know anything about the fire until all of a sudden we heard a lot of screams. We couldn't make out what the screams were for a moment, then we knew it was the eighth graders yelling, "Fire, fire, fire."

We started leaving the room like we had practiced in fire drills. You know we had two or three fire drills already this winter because this is an old school and somebody always figured it was going to burn down some day.

For a while I was all by myself in the room and then some girls came running in. They were from another room. I yelled at them to lie down on the floor, because that's what I remember from fire drills to do when there's a lot of smoke.

The girls said kids from other rooms were hanging on one another's belts to form a line to get to the stairs because the smoke had made it as dark as night on the second floor. A man came running through the door and we could see flames on the other side of the building.

The man grabbed a few girls and led them back out with him.

But I stayed by the window, and I was scared. Then the firemen came up and led me down the ladder.

I'm sorry about all the others.

VALENTINE'S DAY, NYC

Photo: nyfd.com

On Valentine's Day 1958, four members of the New York City Fire Patrol and two members of the New York City Fire Department were killed in a building collapse in a section of Lower Manhattan called ``Hell's Hundred Acres.''

The incident was the deadliest in the fire patrol's history.

Box 66-334 for fire at 137-9 Wooster Street was transmitted at 10:15 p.m. and went to five alarms.

Flames extended thorough open shafts, gnawing at timber supports inside the six-story loft building, which stored paper bales.    

The men of Patrol 1 were spreading salvage covers and the firefighters from Ladder 1 and Ladder 10 were venting the roof when the structure gave way.

These are the names of the dead:

Sergeant Michael McGee, Patrol 1, married (according to the Associated Press)
Patrolman Louis Brusati, Patrol 1, married with two children
Patrolman James Devine, Patrol 1, married with two children
Patrolman Michael Tracey, Patrol 1, married three months

Firefighter Bernard Blumenthal, Ladder 10, married three weeks
Firefighter William Schmid, Ladder 1

In the search for their fallen comrades, patrolmen and firefighters contended with flare-ups from smoldering paper bales beneath the debris.

Less than a decade earlier, on Oct. 15, 1949, a building collapse on West 17th Street claimed the lives of  two patrolmen, Daniel Shea and Frederick Lehman.

CONFLAGRATION, CAMDEN, NJ

Photos: dvrbs.com

Camden, New Jersey, was the scene of a conflagration that devoured factories, homes and automobiles on July 30, 1940. Ten people died in the flames and a firefighter suffered a fatal heart attack.

Firefighters manned an estimated 28 hand lines with 1-inch or 1-1/8-inch tips, a ladder pipe with a 1 1/2-inch tip and three turret nozzles with 1 3/4-inch tips mounted on hose wagons at the height of the inferno, according to the NFPA Journal.

A series of explosions at the R.M. Hollingshead Corp. - which manufactured a variety of flammable liquids used in the auto industry as well as soap and insecticides - preceded the fire.

``The weather at the time of the fire was almost ideal for a conflagration,'' according to the NFPA Journal said. ``The temperature reached a peak of 94 degrees during the fire and averaged 85 degrees for the entire day. A fifteen to twenty-one mile per hour southwest wind was blowing.''

The United Press reported: ``Hoselines were stretched more than a quarter-mile to Cooper River where high-powered pumpers relayed water to the burning paint factory. Police cars were dispatched through the streets of this city of 120,000 with men on the running boards crying to householders to turn off their water so that the city's entire reserve could be placed at the disposal of the fire-fighters.''

Box 61 at 9th and Penn Streets was transmitted at 1:15 p.m. following the explosion. Box 184 at 11th and Cooper Streets was pulled two minutes later. A fourth alarm followed at 1:39 p.m., according to website dvrbs.com. Philadelphia sent Engines 8, 17, 21, 27, 33 as well as Trucks 9 and 23 after a call from Camden Mayor George Brunner. Philadelphia was using two-piece engine companies with hose wagons and pumpers in 1940. Other cities helped too.

ST GEORGE HOTEL, BROOKLYN

Photos: brooklynheightsblog.com

On Aug. 26, 1995, flames destroyed a vacant section of the St. George Hotel in Brooklyn - one of the biggest fires in New York City history.

More than 50 engine companies and 27 ladder companies responded - the equivalent of a 16-alarm blaze.

At the time of the blaze, the hotel consisted of nine buildings constructed between 1885 and 1933 and connected by basements.

Flames raced through shafts from the top down of the 10-story vacant section, extending to all floors and all exposures.

Aggravating the situation, the standpipe system had been vandalized.

Writing in Fire Engineering, Steven DeRosa, deputy assistant chief, described the scene: `` Huge embers the size of baseballs were rising over the fire area and falling into the street and onto roofs in the neighborhood. Hoselines were burned. The radiant heat was intense. ''  

The initial alarm, from Box 77-461, was transmitted at 3:33 a.m. for Engines 224, 207 and 226, Ladders 118 and 110 and Battalion 31.

The blaze was declared under control at 7:05 a.m.

Investigators charged a man scavenging for copper with starting the fire.

GARDEN STATE PARK, NEW JERSEY

Photo: Cherry Hill Fire Dept. Facebook page

On April 14, 1977, fire led to the collapse of the wooden grandstand at Garden State Park horse track in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, during a racing card. Even so, 11,000 people evacuated. Three people died. 

SODDER FAMILY, WEST VIRGINIA

On Christmas Eve 1945, fire destroyed the home of George Sodder, his wife Jennie and nine of their children in Fayetteville, West Virginia. The parents and four of the children escaped. Remains of the other children were never found, leading the Sodders to believe the missing children were kidnapped. They erected a billboard offering a reward for information. The mystery endures. 

LIVE STOCK EXCHANGE, CHICAGO

On May 19, 1934, fire swept the Union Stockyards in Chicago, burning an area of about eight city blocks, including the Live Stock Exchange building, according to the Chicago Sunday Tribune.

CLEVELAND CLINIC, OHIO

The Cleveland Clinic is one of the nation's leading medical centers. On May 15, 1929, a fire and explosion involving nitrocellulose x-ray films sent a toxic cloud cascading through the building, killing 123 people, including a clinic founder, John Phillips.

The clinic's inquiry narrowed possible causes  to spontaneous combustion, a discarded cigarette or match or a light cord.

Cleveland, May 15 (Associated Press) - Poison gas and two explosions which followed burning of X-ray films in the Cleveland clinic today claimed nearly 100 lives.

Tonight there were 98 known dead and hospital authorities worked desperately to administer artificial respiration to 43 others who were overcome. Victims of the disaster were dying at short intervals and physicians sent out appeals for additional oxygen in the fear that the supply in the city might prove insufficient. Oxygen is declared the only effective means of overcoming the gas burns.

Nearly all of the deaths were attributed to the deadly gas which filtered through the four story brick building slowly at first and then, augmented by a second and greater explosion than the first, rushed up from the basement and cut off escape down the stairways and elevators.

Survivors said those asphyxiated were dead, their faces turning yellowish brown color within two minutes after inhaling the gas.

The first explosion came when X-ray films stored in the basement caught fire releasing deadly fumes. The fumes penetrated to the waiting room on the floors above.

The hollow center of the building soon filled with gases. The intense heat below sent the fumes swirling upward. Before any one had opportunity to escape a second blast blew out the skylight and filled every corner of the building with the deadly bromine gas.

Occupants had no way of escape but the windows, and few were able to reach them. These were enveloped in the fumes which hung about the building and they collapsed.

The two street entrances were choked, and the stairways leading to the roof were heavy with fumes. Every piece of fire apparatus available was centered at the clinic and every vehicle possible was commandeered to remove the bodies. An hour and a half later all had been taken to nearby hospitals.

The first firemen to arrive turned in a second alarm and police, hospital and county morgue ambulances were concentrated about the building.

Battalion Fire Chief James P. Flynn, with his driver, Louis Hillenbrand, were the first to enter the building. They reached the roof and chopped a hole leading to a stairway, then dropped a ladder to the fourth floor landing. Below they found sixteen bodies, one a doctor and another a nurse, strewn along the staircase.

STUDY CLUB, DETROIT

1929

Detroit, Sept. 20 (United Press) - A mysterious fire which crackled through the silken hangings of one of Detroit's most exclusive night clubs took at least 16 lives today and injured 55 persons.

The luxurious interior of the Study Club, on Vernon Highway in the center of the downtown district, was hollowed out by the flames as 100 panic-stricken patrons dived for exits, leaping from windows and risking broken bones to escape.

Firemen advanced the theory that the blaze might have started in the basement where rubbish accumulated after the club was redecorated. Police, however, were investigating a report that a bomb explosion caused the fire.

Firemen who smashed their way into the second floor cloakroom found 25 persons, the living piled with the dead.

The exterior of the building was only slightly damaged. All the heat and smoke were concentrated in the interior. Damage was estimated at $35,000. As the flames fumed and sputtered up the silken hangings, dead gases were thrown off. Rescuers found several of the dead had been asphyxiated.

Once firemen had beaten down the flames to the main room, they soon had the blaze under control. As victims, many with their clothing burned off, continued to struggle out of the building, a search was started for bodies and possible survivors. On the small dance floor was found the body of a cigarette girl, her arms wrapped around her tray.

BOARDWALK FIRE, OCEAN CITY, NJ

1927

Ocean City, N. J., Oct. 12. (United Press) - An area eight blocks square was a smoldering mass of debris today after one of the most disastrous fires in local history.

Thirty buildings were razed, causing a loss of approximately $4,000,000. Among them were three big frame hotels, shops, business houses, a garage, two motion picture theatres, many boardwalk concessionaires and the Hippodrome Pier.

Three firemen were injured severely by glass and flame, one of them perhaps fatally.

The fire started at 7 p.m. and within a few hours several frame buildings were ablaze. A shift in the wind at 11 p.m. helped check the blaze. Fireproof buildings along Asbury avenue, the main business section, also aided in checking the flames.

Fifteen minutes after the firemen began playing on the blazing structures on the 'walk' the flames had made their way down Ninth street and fired the Boardwalk Garage, adjoining the Arcade building on the Ninth street side.

With a roar that could be heard all over the resort, a huge gasoline tank exploded, sending the blazing fuel high into the air. The firemen ran for their lives, and as they did so three more tanks went up in rapid succession. The high-shooting flames and the burning embers carried to the air by the stiff breeze from the ocean landed on the tops of other buildings, and in a short time the entire Boardwalk section between Ninth and Tenth streets was a blazing mass.

FISH FLAP FLAMES, PHILADELPHIA

Flames that broke out in the store of Thomas E. Henry, 2235 Germantown Avenue, Philadelphia, while nobody was about reached a big aquarium that held 300 goldfish and cracked the glass, letting out most of the water. The escaping water put out most of the fire, and the goldfish extinguished the rest of the flames.

The water remaining in the aquarium was so low that the majority of the fish were left uncovered. In their desperation the fish flapped their tails, and the simultaneous effort of 300 fish power sent the water out of the aquarium in showers on the burning furniture and furnishings.

Fish put out the fire after $200 damage had been done. They were found gasping in the tank after their efforts had exhausted their water supply, but were soon worse for their experience.

"Those fish are too good to be sold, and I've a notion to send them to President Roosevelt." said Mr. Henry after the fire.

The Montgomery Advertiser, Montgomery - Nov. 17, 1901

OF MICE AND MATCHES

HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania

A fire, apparently caused by mice gnawing matches, occurred at the home of H. C. Felker, 1529 North Fourth street, yesterday about 4:30 p.m.

Mrs. Felker who was in the yard, noticed flames in the rear of the house. Her cries awoke Mr. Felker, a railroad man, who was asleep on the second floor.

An alarm was sounded from box 31, Third and Relly streets.  When the engines arrived the flames had already made their way to the second floor.   The fire was extinguished about twenty-five minutes after the alarm was sounded.  The rear end of the house was damaged to the extent of about $300.

The Daily Patriot, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania - July 29, 1920

BOX 77-22-270, BROOKLYN

Photo: nyfd.com

Brooklyn Box 77-22-270 - Ladder 146 at two-alarm fire on Seigel Street (circa 1960s, 1970s). Note makeshift cover on truck's cab, a common feature added during periods of civil unrest.

WINTER DUTY, MANHATTAN

Photo: nyfd.com

FDNY Ladder 12 - 1931 American LaFrance 75-foot aerial

BIG JOHN, CHICAGO

Photo: chicagoareafire.com

The Chicago Fire Department 's ``Big John'' Turret Wagon, call sign 6-7-3, hit the streets in May 1970. It was built by the department shops on a 1952 IHC M65 chassis and named for its designer, John F. Plant. A regular big blazes, it featured twin Stang HP deluge monitors capable of flowing 15,000 GPM, according to chicagoareafire.com. 

FDNY HIGH LADDER

Photo: nyfd.com

In the 1960s, the New York City Fire Department fielded at 144-foot aerial ladder.   

HOTEL LINCOLN, SEATTLE

On April 7, 1920, firefighters with scaling ladders and ropes rescued guests from a blaze at the Hotel Lincoln in Seattle. Four people died, including Firefighter Charles F. Lacasse of Ladder 4, who was trapped by a collapsed wall, according to historylink.org. Fire Marshal Harry Bringhurst described the hotel - built in 1899 - as ``little else than a lumber yard with four brick walls around it," The Seattle Times reported. 

HOTEL FIRE, TACOMA

On Oct. 17, 1935, fire destroyed the landmark Hotel Tacoma in Tacoma, Washington state, according to the Associated Press. Fire lieutenants C. Smiley and Stewart Lemm, along with Driver G.J. Letterman, suffered smoke inhalation. A guest, Mrs. Edith Owens, was also overcome by smoke and taken to Tacoma General Hospital.

HOTEL ADAMS, PHOENIX

On May 17, 1910, fire destroyed the Hotel Adams in Phoenix, Arizona, at the time `` the largest and most expensive building'' in the city, according to the Arizona Republican newspaper. ``All afternoon and all night streams of hose played upon the ruin which kept shooting up flames and showers of sparks,'' the newspaper said. No injuries were reported.

ROYAL STREET, NEW ORLEANS

Photo: old-new-orleans.com

Steamers pump water for firefighters battling blaze on Royal Street from well at intersection of Bourbon and Iberville streets. Probably early 1900s.

BUSINESS DISTRICT, DALLAS

Dallas Fire Department station at 10th and Tyler in 1931. Photo: oakcliff.org

A dramatic radio broadcast drew thousands of spectators to a fire in Dallas, Texas, on April 4, 1930.

Here are excerpts from The Dallas Morning News:

With exploding paint barrels throwing flames high into the air, fire Friday night swept a spectacular path through a downtown business block.

The damaged property fronted the 600 blocks of Commerce and Jackson streets, between Jefferson and Market streets.

A radio announcer from a near-by studio, seeing the flames, announced the location and described the scenic effects with such gusto that a gigantic crowd of onlookers pressed to the scene.

Police estimated that 5,000 people jostled into the vicinity, viewing the fire at one time, and that 50,000 joined the cavalcades that jammed thoroughfares in efforts to arrive.

Attracted by the hyperbolie [sic] descriptions of the radio announcer, people were reported leaving their homes in near-by towns for a view of the spectacle, under the impression that the Dallas business district was being swept by an uncontrollable conflagration.

The fire started at about 9:30 o'clock and shrtly after 10 o'clock it was under control. At 11 o'clock reports were being received of streets being jammed by eager crowds in automobiles.

Although unwieldy because of its excessive numbers, the crowd of spectators stayed in the main tractable and fairly easily kept out of danger by police, who formed fire lines around the block. 

Sixteen engine companies and six hook and ladder companies were brought into play by Fire Chief Jess Coffman in quelling the flames. Firefighters were deployed about the blaze from every side.

RELIANCE HOTEL, CHICAGO

On Dec. 17, 1953, a hotel on Chicago's skid row collapsed, trapping about 30 firefighters as they were taking up from a fire, according to the United Press and the international News Service.

Investigators suspected hotel resident John Tybor, who was released from a mental hospital a day earlier, set the fire after they found a note on his body saying : ``I'm really crazy.''

A fire department chaplain, Monsignor William Gorman, picked his way through the ruins and administered the last rites of the Roman Catholic Church.

Lieutenant Albert Joslin, who plunged three stories to the basement, said from a hospital bed: ``I'm lucky I got out in as good shape as I am. As the noise of falling debris settled down, we started yelling among each other to see who could move.''

Five firefighters died.

They were:

Capt. NICHOLAS SCHMIDT, battalion commander
ROBERT JORDAN, Truck 2.
ROBERT SHAACK, Hook and Ladder 19
GEORGE MALIK, Engine 34.
JOHN JAROSE, Engine 31.

Tybor died too.

GREEN HORNET, CHICAGO

On May 25, 1950,  a ``Green Hornet'' street car exploded in flames after ramming a gasoline tanker in Chicago,  according to the Associated Press and United Press.

Waves of burning gasoline ignited buildings and autos, blistered billboards - and took the lives of 34 people. 

Extra alarms brought 34 pieces of fire apparatus to the scene at the intersection of 63rd and State Street.

The Green Hornet  was moving at a brisk speed when it entered an open switch - sending it coursing into traffic.

Calvin M. Dahl, who witnessed the crash from his auto, said: "I slowed down but the street car didn't. It hit that switch and it swerved. It smacked that truck right in the middle and the truck jumped about five feet.''

Peter Sunadis,  owner of a nearby tavern, said: "I ran to the telephone but before I could complete a call to the fire department the front window of the tavern cracked under the intense heat and then fell inside."

Passengers stood little or no chance.

An eyewitness said: "Only a few escaped through windows. Their clothes were on fire. They looked like little flaming dolls."

The Green Hornet's motorman and the tanker driver were among the dead.