The New York City Fire Department, officially the Fire Department of the City of New York (FDNY) is the full-service fire department of New York City, serving all five boroughs. The FDNY is responsible for fire suppression and fire prevention, and is a major provider of EMS services in New York City. Beyond fire suppression and EMS, the FDNY is responsible for a broad range of services, including technical rescue, CBRN defense, and structural collapse response and analysis. The FDNY is equipped with a wide variety of general-purpose and specialized Vehicles,Tools and Equipment to serve its varied missions.
On Monday, December 1, 1958, a fire broke out at Our Lady of the Angels School in Chicago, Illinois, shortly before classes were to be dismissed for the day. The fire originated in the basement near the foot of a stairway. The elementary school was operated by the Archdiocese of Chicago and had an enrollment of approximately 1600 students. A total of 92 pupils and three nuns ultimately died when smoke, heat, fire, and toxic gases cut off their normal means of egress through corridors and stairways. Many more were injured when they jumped from second-floor windows which, because the building had a raised basement, were nearly as high above ground as a third floor would be on level ground, approximately 25 feet (7.6 m).
Firefighting is a profession aimed at controlling and extinguishing fire. A person who engages in firefighting is known as a firefighter or fireman. Firefighters typically undergo a high degree of technical training. This involves structural firefighting and wildland firefighting. Specialized training includes aircraft firefighting, shipboard firefighting, aerial firefighting, maritime firefighting, and proximity firefighting.
The New York City Fire Museum is a museum dedicated to the New York City Fire Department (FDNY) in the Hudson Square neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It is housed in the former quarters of the FDNY's Engine Company No. 30, a renovated 1904 fire house at 278 Spring Street between Varick and Hudson Streets.
Parkchester is a planned community and neighborhood originally developed by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company and located in the central Bronx, New York City. The immediate surrounding area also takes its name from the complex. Its boundaries, starting from the north and moving clockwise, are East Tremont Avenue to the north, Castle Hill Avenue to the east, Westchester Avenue to the south, East 177th Street/Cross Bronx Expressway to the southwest, and White Plains Road to the west. Metropolitan Avenue, Unionport Road, and White Plains Road are the primary thoroughfares through Parkchester.
The Wincrest Nursing Home fire took place on Friday, January 30, 1976, in Chicago, Illinois, United States. The fire occurred when an arsonist set a wardrobe closet on fire at the Wincrest Nursing Home building, located at 6326 N. Winthrop Avenue. The alarm sounded at 11:30 a.m. and the fire was put out at 1:30 p.m. Although the building itself sustained minor smoke, fire and water damage, 23 people died from smoke inhalation. A 21-year-old housekeeper was arrested by authorities and was charged with multiple counts of arson.
The 1913 Binghamton factory fire occurred on July 22, 1913, on the premises of the Binghamton Clothing Company, in Binghamton, New York. It destroyed the Wall Street building in less than 20 minutes, killing 31 of the more than 100 people inside. Though not as deadly as the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911, it put even more pressure on New York officials to strengthen life safety codes, increase funding for more inspectors, and increase penalties for violations.
The Winecoff Hotel fire, of December 7, 1946, was the deadliest hotel fire in American history, killing 119 hotel occupants, including the hotel's original owners. Located at 176 Peachtree Street in Atlanta, Georgia, the Winecoff Hotel was advertised as "absolutely fireproof". While the hotel's steel structure was indeed protected against the effects of fire, its interior finishes were combustible and the building's exit arrangements consisted of a single stairway serving all fifteen floors. All of the hotel's occupants above the fire's origin on the third floor were trapped, and the fire's survivors either were rescued from upper-story windows or jumped into nets held by firemen.
On February 27, 1975, fire broke out at the New York Telephone Company switching center at 204 Second Avenue and Thirteenth Street in the East Village of Manhattan, New York City. At this time, the building contained central offices for connecting local customer telephone lines, as well as toll switching systems. The fire disrupted service for 175,000 customers, connected within the building through 105,000 service loops. It was the worst single service disaster suffered by any single Bell operating company in the 20th century.
On December 2, 2016, at about 11:20 p.m. PST, a fire started in a former warehouse that had been unlawfully converted into an artist collective with living spaces in Oakland, California which was hosting a concert with 80-100 attendees. The blaze killed 36 people, making it the deadliest fire in the history of Oakland. The building, located in the Fruitvale neighbourhood, was zoned for only industrial purposes; residential and entertainment uses were prohibited. It was also the deadliest building fire in the United States since The Station nightclub fire in 2003, the deadliest in California since the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and the deadliest mass-casualty event in Oakland since the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.
Black Sunday has been used to describe January 23, 2005, when three firefighters of the New York City Fire Department (FDNY) died in two fires: two at a tenement fire in the Morris Heights section of the Bronx, with four others being seriously injured, and one at a house fire in the East New York section of Brooklyn. It was the deadliest day for the FDNY since the World Trade Center attack on September 11, 2001, and the first time since 1918 that firefighters had died at two separate incidents on the same day.
On 14 June 2017, a high-rise fire broke out in the 24-storey Grenfell Tower block of flats in North Kensington, West London, at 00:54 BST and burned for 60 hours. Seventy people died at the scene, and two people died later in hospital, with more than 70 injured and 223 escaping. It was the deadliest structural fire in the United Kingdom since the 1988 Piper Alpha oil-platform disaster and the worst UK residential fire since the German Bombings of World War II.
On 25 August 2018, a fire broke out at the Beilong Hot Spring Hotel in Harbin. Located in the city's Taiyang Island (太阳岛) resort area, the four-storey brick-and-concrete hotel mostly accommodates domestic tourists and was hosting over 100 people at the time, many of whom were visiting for an annual marathon. The fire resulted in 20 deaths and 23 injuries.
On 5 February 2019, a fire killed at least 10 people and injured at least 36 others at an apartment block on Rue Erlanger in Paris' 16th arrondissement, France, making it the deadliest fire in the French capital since 2005.
The Alpine Motel Apartments fire occurred in downtown Las Vegas, Nevada, on December 21, 2019. The three-story building, constructed in 1972, had failed several fire inspections and received numerous code enforcement complaints in the years prior to the fire. Some residents did not have working heaters and were using their kitchen stoves for warmth, which led to the fire. It killed six residents and injured 13 others. It is the deadliest fire to occur in Las Vegas city limits. As a result, the city increased its inspections of older apartment buildings.
In the early morning hours of 14 October 2021, at 02:54 NST (UTC+8), a fire broke out in a 13-storey building at Fubei Road in Yancheng District, Kaohsiung, a city in southwestern Taiwan. At least 46 people were killed, and 41 others were injured. The fire was extinguished after about four and a half hours. The cause of the fire is under investigation, although piles of debris left around the building may have complicated rescue efforts and helped fuel the fire.
On the morning of January 5, 2022, a fire tore through a row house converted into apartments in the Fairmount neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Twelve people died, nine of them children, and two others were injured. Five additional people escaped from the first floor unit with minor injuries. The fire happened just four days before the 2022 Bronx apartment fire, also in the Northeastern United States.
On the morning of January 9, 2022, a high-rise fire killed seventeen people, including eight children, at the Twin Parks North West, Site 4, high-rise apartment building in the Bronx, New York City, United States. Forty-four people were injured, and thirty-two with life-threatening injuries were sent to five different borough hospitals. Fifteen were in critical condition the day after the fire.
Twin Parks is a housing development in the Bronx, New York City. Its buildings were designed by leading architects, and were widely hailed as "the cutting edge of public design" when constructed in the early 1970s.
