Below is a list of the deadliest firefighter disasters in the United States, in which more than five firefighters died. "Firefighter" is defined as a professional trained to fight fires. Hence the 1933 Griffith Park fire is excluded, as it killed 29 untrained civilians.
Chester is a village on the Chester Peninsula, Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia, Canada.
The Great Fire of 1910 was a wildfire in the Inland Northwest region of the United States that in the summer of 1910 burned three million acres in North Idaho and Western Montana, with extensions into Eastern Washington and Southeast British Columbia. The area burned included large parts of the Bitterroot, Cabinet, Clearwater, Coeur d'Alene, Flathead, Kaniksu, Kootenai, Lewis and Clark, Lolo, and St. Joe national forests. The fire burned over two days on the weekend of August 20–21, after strong winds caused numerous smaller fires to combine into a firestorm of unprecedented size. It killed 87 people, mostly firefighters, destroyed numerous manmade structures, including several entire towns, and burned more than three million acres of forest with an estimated billion dollars' worth of timber lost. While the exact cause of the fire is often debated, according to various U.S. Forest Service sources, the primary cause of the Big Burn was a combination of severe drought and a series of lightning storms that ignited hundreds of small fires across the Northern Rockies. However, the ignition sources also include human activity such as railroads, homesteaders, and loggers. It is believed to be the largest, although not the deadliest, forest fire in U.S. history.
The Rhythm Club fire was a fire in a dance hall in Natchez, Mississippi on the night of April 23, 1940, which killed 209 people and severely injured many others. Hundreds of people were trapped inside the building. At the time, it was the second deadliest building fire in the history of the nation. It is now ranked as the fourth deadliest assembly and club fire in U.S. history.
The Bright Sparklers fireworks disaster occurred in Sungai Buloh, Selangor, Malaysia on 7 May 1991 at 3:45 (MST). The Bright Sparklers fireworks factory in Sungai Buloh, Selangor caught fire and caused a huge explosion. Twenty six people were killed and over a hundred people were injured in the disaster. The explosion was strong enough to rip off the roofs of some local houses, and ended up damaging over 200 residential properties and was felt as far as 7-8 kilometers from the side.
The Kansas City Fire Department provides fire protection and emergency medical service for Kansas City, Missouri, and under contract to Village of the Oaks, Village of Oakwood Park, and Village of Oakwood. It provides fire protection only under contract to City of Lake Waukomis, City of Platte Woods, City of Weatherby Lake, and Village of Ferrelview. In addition, it provides EMS support under contract for the City of Riverside. It operates 35 fire stations, one dedicated EMS operations facility housing dynamically deployed ambulances, organized into seven battalions and cover 318 square miles (820 km2).
Royd Anderson is a Cuban-American filmmaker and historian based in New Orleans, Louisiana. He specializes in documentary films pertaining to tragic Louisiana events often overlooked by historians.
The Yarnell Hill Fire was a wildfire near Yarnell, Arizona, ignited by dry lightning on June 28, 2013. On June 30, it overran and killed 19 members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots, a group of firefighters within the Prescott Fire Department. Just one of the hotshots on the crew survived —he was posted as a lookout on the fire and was not with the others when the fire overtook them. The Yarnell Hill Fire was one of the deadliest U.S. wildfires since the 1991 Oakland Hills fire, which killed 25 people, and the deadliest wildland fire for U.S. firefighters since the 1933 Griffith Park fire, which killed 29 "impromptu" civilian firefighters drafted on short notice to help battle the Los Angeles area fire.
The Kingman explosion, also known as the Doxol disaster or Kingman BLEVE, was a catastrophic boiling liquid expanding vapor explosion (BLEVE) that occurred on July 5, 1973, in Kingman, Arizona, United States.
On June 3, 2015, an explosion and a fire occurred at a petrol station in Ghana's capital city Accra, killing over 250 people.
On 16 January 1965, a U.S. Air Force Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker crashed in the central United States, in a neighborhood in north-eastern Wichita, Kansas, after taking off from McConnell Air Force Base. This resulted in the deaths of all seven crew members on board the aircraft and an additional twenty-three people on the ground.
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 Great Mill Disaster, also known as the Washburn A Mill explosion, occurred on May 2, 1878, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The disaster resulted in 18 deaths. The explosion occurred on a Thursday evening when an accumulation of flour dust inside the Washburn A Mill, the largest mill in the world at the time, led to a dust explosion that killed the fourteen workers inside the mill. The resulting fire destroyed several nearby mills and killed a further four millworkers. The destruction seriously impacted the city's productive capacity for flour, which was a major industry in the city. Following the blast, Cadwallader C. Washburn, the mill's owner, had a new mill, designed by William de la Barre, constructed on the site of the old one. This building was also later destroyed, and today the building's ruins are a National Historic Landmark and operated as part of the Mill City Museum.