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 Summerland disaster occurred when a fire spread through the Summerland leisure centre in Douglas on the Isle of Man on the night of 2 August 1973. 50 people were killed and 80 seriously injured. The scale of the fire has been compared to those seen during the Blitz.
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).
The Chicago Union Stock Yards fire occurred from December 22 to December 23, 1910 in Chicago, resulting in the deaths of twenty-one Chicago Fire Department firemen.
The Garley Building fire took place on 20 November 1996 in the 16-storey Garley commercial building located at 232–240 Nathan Road, Jordan, Hong Kong. The fire caused 41 deaths and 81 injuries. It is considered the worst building fire in Hong Kong during peacetime. The fire damaged the bottom two floors and the top three floors of the building, while the middle floors remained relatively intact.
Waldbaum's was a supermarket chain with stores in the New York City boroughs of Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and the Bronx; and in Nassau, Suffolk counties and Upstate New York. The chain also for a time operated stores in New Jersey, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. Founded in 1904, Waldbaum's was one of seven "banner store chains" owned and operated by The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company (A&P), which acquired the chain from its founding family in 1986.
On 20 November 1992, a fire broke out in Windsor Castle, the largest inhabited castle in the world and one of the official residences of the British monarch. The castle suffered extensive damage and was fully repaired within the next five years at a cost of £36.5 million, in a project led by the conservation architects Donald Insall Associates. It led to Queen Elizabeth II paying tax on her income, and to Buckingham Palace, one of her other official residences, being opened to the public to help pay for the restoration work. This event was part of what the Queen called her annus horribilis.
The Wholesale District or Warehouse District in Downtown Los Angeles, California, has no exact boundaries, but at present it lies along the BNSF and Union Pacific Railroad lines, which run parallel with Alameda Street and the Los Angeles River. Except for some ancillary commercial uses, its cityscape is mostly occupied by warehouses and refrigerated storage facilities. This area is known as Central City North in the Los Angeles city zoning map.
Vancouver Fire and Rescue Services (VFRS) was founded in 1886 and today serves the city of Vancouver, British Columbia, providing fire, medical first response, rescue and extrication services. In 2017, VFRS responded to 67,000 emergency calls.
The Worcester Cold Storage and Warehouse Co. fire began on December 3, 1999, in a 93-year-old abandoned building at 266 Franklin Street, Worcester, Massachusetts. The fire was started accidentally some time between 4:30–5:45 pm by two homeless people who were squatting in the building and had knocked over a candle. They left the scene without reporting the fire. The 6-story building, previously used as a meat cold storage facility, had no windows above the ground floor and no fire detection or suppression systems. The fire, which started on the second story, burned undetected for 30–90 minutes.
The Charleston Sofa Super Store fire disaster occurred on the evening of June 18, 2007, in Charleston, South Carolina, and killed nine firefighters. This was the deadliest firefighter disaster in the US since the September 11 attacks. Though the fire was believed to have started in some discarded furniture in the loading dock area, the exact source of ignition remains undetermined. After the fire, the store was demolished and bought by Charleston and a fire station was built nearby.
The 23rd Street Fire was an incident that took place in the Flatiron District neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, on October 17, 1966. A group of firefighters from the New York City Fire Department responding to a fire at 7 East 22nd Street entered a building at 6 East 23rd Street as part of an effort to fight the fire. Twelve firefighters were killed after the floor collapsed, the largest loss of life in the department's history until the collapse of the World Trade Center in the September 11 attacks of 2001.
A refinery owned by Gulf Oil Corporation in Philadelphia, located at Girard Point on the Schuylkill River in South Philadelphia, caught fire on Sunday, August 17, 1975. This incident grew into an 11-alarm fire, not brought under control until 24 hours later, and resulted in the death of eight firefighters of the Philadelphia Fire Department (PFD), injuries to 14 other firefighters, and the loss of four PFD vehicles.
The 1978 Holiday Inn fire broke out at a Holiday Inn hotel located at 1525 West Ridge Road in the town of Greece, New York, United States, on November 26, 1978. The fire was considered notable enough by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) and the Center for Fire Research to document the fire in their 1979 publications. In the end, ten people were killed and 34 injured; seven of the fatalities were Canadian nationals. In 2008, the NFPA listed the 1978 Holiday Inn fire as one of only three dozen or so fires which killed ten or more people in the U.S. between 1934 and 2006.
The Kilbirnie Street fire, on Friday 25 August 1972, was a warehouse fire in the Port Eglinton area, on the south side of Glasgow, Scotland, which killed seven Glasgow Fire Service firemen in a flashover while they were trying to rescue a trapped colleague. What started as a routine industrial premises fire resulted in one of the highest losses of life for the UK Fire Service at a single incident in peacetime.
The Great New York City Fire of 1845 broke out on July 19, 1845, in Lower Manhattan, New York City. The fire started in a whale oil and candle manufacturing establishment and quickly spread to other wooden structures. It reached a warehouse on Broad Street where combustible saltpeter was stored and caused a massive explosion that spread the fire even farther.
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 Strand Theatre fire occurred in Brockton, Massachusetts on March 10, 1941. Thirteen firefighters were killed when the roof collapsed, making it the deadliest firefighter disaster in Massachusetts.
A rain roof is a second, newer roof that has been constructed over an existing roof that has failed, or which has inadequate slope to shed rain. Since such additional spaces may not be visible or accessible, the concealed void presents a particular hazard in firefighting operations, as a fire may develop or persist in such a space undetected.
