 |
Not in history has a modern imperial city been so completely destroyed. San Francisco is gone.Jack London after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire
This article is a list of notable fires.
|
Not in history has a modern imperial city been so completely destroyed. San Francisco is gone.Jack London after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire
This article is a list of notable fires.
This is a partial list of fire due to mining: human-made structures to extract minerals, ores, rock, petroleum, natural gas, etc.
| Date | Location | Dead/injured | Details | References |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1884 to present | New Straitsville, Ohio | Coal mine fire ignited by striking miners | World's Greatest Mine Fire [2] | |
| 31 May 1892 | Příbram, now in the Czech Republic, | 319/? | Fire in Marine iron mine | |
| 7 September 1895 | Osceola Township, Houghton County, Michigan | 30/? | Osceola copper mine caught fire | [3] |
| 7 April 1911 | Colliery, Throop, Pennsylvania, | 72/? | Fire at the Prince-Pancoast, leaving 72 dead by suffocation | [4] |
| 1915 to present | Luzerne County, Pennsylvania | Laurel Run mine fire ignited when a carbide lamp set fire to a timber support | ||
| 1956 | Belgium | 262/? | Bois du Cazier fire killed 262 people from 12 nations | |
| 1962 | Algeria | Devil's Cigarette Lighter fire in a gas field, lasted almost 6 months before doused with explosives | ||
| 1962 to present | Pennsylvania | Centralia Mine Fire, rendering the town uninhabitable | ||
| 1967 to present | Kukruse, Estonia | A continuously burning gangue mound at the Kukruse mine | ||
| 1971 to present | Derweze, Ahal Province, Turkmenistan | Darvaza gas crater fire in a natural gas field | ||
| morning of 2 May 1972 | Kellogg, Idaho | 91/? | Fire broke out in the Sunshine Mine, on the morning of 2 May; 91 workers died from smoke inhalation or carbon monoxide poisoning | |
| 16 September 1986 | Kinross, Transvaal, South Africa | 177/235 | Kinross mining disaster fire in a gold mine owned by the General Mining Union Corporation | [5] |
| 6 July 1988 | North Sea | 167/? | Piper Alpha oil platform disaster | |
| 1991 | State of Kuwait | Kuwaiti oil fires following the Gulf War | ||
| 2010 | Gulf of Mexico | Explosion and fire on the Deepwater Horizon mobile offshore drilling unit | ||
| New Zealand | 29/? | Pike River Mine disaster in New Zealand; a series of three explosions in the mine was followed by a fourth which set fire to the coal. 29 miners and contractors perished. | ||
| 4 December 2015 | Caspian Sea | 12+18 missing /? | Gunashli Platform No.10 fire broke out on the offshore oil and gas platform in the Azerbaijani section of the Caspian Sea; 12 confirmed deaths, 18 missing. |
| Date | Location | Dead/injured | Details | References |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8 October 1871 | Michigan | >200/? | A series of fires across the state, the most severe of which was the Port Huron fire. The combined Michigan fires killed over 200 people and burned about 1.2 million acres. Occurred on the same day as the Great Chicago Fire and the Peshtigo Fire. | The Great Michigan Fire |
| 8 October 1871 | Wisconsin | 1,500–2,500/? | Deadliest wildfire in world history. Death toll can only be estimated because entire towns with all town records were incinerated. Burned over 1.2 million acres. Occurred on the same day as the Great Chicago Fire and the Great Michigan Fires. | Peshtigo Fire |
| 1910 | North Idaho and Western Montana | 87/? | The largest Fire in U.S. history burned an area the size of Connecticut (3,000,000 acres [12,000 km2]), killing 87 people, including 78 firefighters | Great Fire of 1910 [6] |
| 1911 | Ontario | 73–200/? | Great Porcupine Fire | |
| 29 July 1916 | 223/? | Six towns destroyed, two more damaged | Matheson Fire | |
| 12 October 1918 | Minnesota | 453/? | 1918 Cloquet Fire | |
| 1921 | 35/? | 1921 Mari wildfires | ||
| 1922 | Northern Ontario | Several towns destroyed including 90% of the city of Haileybury, Ontario | Great Fire of 1922 | |
| 1933 | Los Angeles, California, | 29/? | Griffith Park Fire in Los Angeles, California, killed 29 firefighters on 3 October. | Griffith Park Fire |
| 1933 | Tillamook Burn, Oregon |
Bushfires in Australia are a widespread and regular occurrence that have contributed significantly to shaping the nature of the continent over millions of years. Eastern Australia is one of the most fire-prone regions of the world, and its predominant eucalyptus forests have evolved to thrive on the phenomenon of bushfire. However, the fires can cause significant property damage and loss of both human and animal life. Bushfires have killed approximately 800 people in Australia since 1851, and billions of animals.
The Black Saturday bushfires were a series of bushfires that either ignited or were already burning across the Australian state of Victoria on and around Saturday, 7 February 2009, and were one of Australia's all-time worst bushfire disasters. The fires occurred during extreme bushfire weather conditions and resulted in Australia's highest-ever loss of human life from a bushfire, with 173 fatalities. Many people were left homeless and family-less as a result.
9,159 wildfires were active in the US state of California during 2009. The fires burned more than 422,147 acres of land from early February through late November, due to Red Flag conditions, destroying hundreds of structures, injuring 134 people, and killing four. The wildfires also caused at least US$134.48 million in damage. Although the fires burned many different regions of California in August, the month was especially notable for several very large fires which burned in Southern California, despite being outside of the normal fire season for that region.
The summer of 2012–13 had above average fire potential for most of the southern half of the continent from the east coast to the west. This is despite having extensive fire in parts of the country over the last 12 months. The reason for this prediction is the abundant grass growth spurred by two La Niña events over the last two years.
The bushfire season in the summer of 2014–15, was expected to have the potential for many fires in eastern Australia after lower than expected rainfall was received in many areas. Authorities released warnings in the early spring that the season could be particularly bad.
The Great Fire of Valparaíso started on 12 April 2014 at 16:40 local time, in the hills of the city of Valparaíso, Chile. The wildfire destroyed at least 2,500 homes, leaving 11,000 people homeless. An additional 6,000 people were evacuated from the city, which was placed on red alert and declared a disaster zone. Fifteen people were confirmed killed and ten suffered serious injuries.
The October 2007 California wildfires, also known as the Fall 2007 California firestorm, were a series of about thirty wildfires that began igniting across Southern California on October 20. At least 1,500 homes were destroyed and approximately 972,147 acres of land was burned from Santa Barbara County to the U.S.–Mexico border, surpassing the October 2003 California wildfires in scope, which were estimated to have burned 800,000 acres (3,200 km2). The wildfires killed a total of 14 people, with nine of them dying directly from the fires; 160 others were injured, including at least 124 firefighters. At their height, the raging fires were visible from space. These fires included the vast majority of the largest and deadliest wildfires of the 2007 California wildfire season. The only wildfire in 2007 that surpassed any of the individual October 2007 fires in size was the Zaca Fire.
The Soberanes Fire was a large wildfire that burned from July to October 2016 in the Santa Lucia Mountains of Monterey County, California. It destroyed 57 homes and killed a bulldozer operator, and cost about $260 million to suppress, making it at the time the most expensive wildfire to fight in United States history. At the fire's peak, over 5,000 personnel were assigned to the blaze. The fire was the result of an illegal campfire in Garrapata State Park. By the time it was finally extinguished, the fire had burned 132,127 acres (53,470 ha) along the Big Sur coast in the Los Padres National Forest, Ventana Wilderness, and adjacent private and public land in Monterey County, ranking it 18th on the list of the largest California wildfires in terms of acreage burned.
A series of wildfires burned across Chile during January 2017.
The 2018 wildfire season was the deadliest and most destructive wildfire season in California history. It was also the largest on record at the time, now third after the 2020 and 2021 California wildfire seasons. In 2018, there were a total of 103 confirmed fatalities, 24,226 structures damaged or destroyed, and 8,527 fires burning 1,975,086 acres (799,289 ha), about 2% of the state's 100 million acres of land. Through the end of August 2018, Cal Fire alone spent $432 million on operations. The catastrophic Camp Fire alone killed at least 85 people, destroyed 18,804 buildings and caused $16.5 billion in property damage, while overall the fires resulted in at least $26.347 billion in property damage and firefighting costs, including $25.4 billion in property damage and $947 million in fire suppression costs.
The 2019–20 Australian bushfire season, or Black Summer, was one of the most intense and catastrophic fire seasons on record in Australia. It included a period of bushfires in many parts of Australia, which, due to its unusual intensity, size, duration, and uncontrollable dimension, was considered a megafire by media at the time. Exceptionally dry conditions, a lack of soil moisture, and early fires in Central Queensland led to an early start to the bushfire season, beginning in June 2019. Hundreds of fires burnt, mainly in the southeast of the country, until May 2020. The most severe fires peaked from December 2019 to January 2020.
On 23 January 2020, a fire was started in the Agrícola del Lago reed bed in Cagua, Aragua state, Venezuela. Eleven people were confirmed to have died as a result of the fire, all but two being minors.
A megafire is an exceptional fire that devastates a large area. They are characterised by their intensity, size, duration and uncontrollable scale. There is no precise scientific definition.
The August Complex fire was a massive wildfire complex that burned in the Coast Range of Northern California, in Glenn, Lake, Mendocino, Tehama, Trinity, and Shasta Counties. The complex originated as 38 separate fires started by lightning strikes on August 16–17, 2020. Four of the largest fires, the Doe, Tatham, Glade, and Hull fires, had burned together by August 30. On September 9, the Doe Fire, the main fire of the August Complex, surpassed the 2018 Mendocino Complex to become both the single-largest wildfire and the largest fire complex in recorded California history. On September 10, the combined Doe Fire also merged with the Elkhorn Fire and the Hopkins Fire, growing substantially in size. By the time it was extinguished on November 12, the August Complex fire had burned a total of 1,032,648 acres (417,898 ha), or 1,614 square miles (4,180 km2), about 1% of California's 100 million acres of land, an area larger than the state of Rhode Island.
The 1999 Jones Fire was a destructive wildfire in the U.S. state of California's Shasta County. The fire ignited on October 16, and was contained on October 19, 1999. It burned 26,200 acres (10,600 ha), destroyed 954 structures, and resulted in one fatality, becoming the then-second most destructive wildfire ever recorded in California, behind only the Oakland firestorm of 1991. As of 2023 it remains one of the 20 most destructive wildfires in the history of the state. The cause of the fire was never determined.
The 2024 South American wildfires refer to a mega colossal series of wildfires that significantly impacted several neighboring South American countries, including Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. Based on Global Wildfire Information System satellite imaging, about 346,112 wildfire hotspots damaged or destroyed 85,866,867 hectares. The massive area burned was primarily caused by anthropogenic climate change and the resulting consequences of the 2023–2024 South American drought on fire conditions. The wildfires caused significant deforestation of the Amazon rainforest, and also impacted several other international biomes including the Pantanal wetlands, becoming the second largest series of wildfires in the 21st century next to the 2023–24 Australian bushfire season, with the 2024 Brazil wildfires alone reaching fourth in area burned.
| History | |
|---|---|
| Science | |
| Components | |
| Individual fires | |
| Crime | |
| People | |
| Culture | |
| Organizations | |
| Other | |
